


Dearly Departed

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Divorce, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major Illness, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Apocalypse, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:30:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 68,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5337548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Zach are in the middle of divorce proceedings when a deadly pandemic sweeps across the globe, decimating the world’s population. When Zach falls ill, Chris has no choice but to take him out of Los Angeles in search of somewhere safer, where they have a hope of survival. What he finds is a tiny group of people who have laid claim to a campground in the San Bernardino mountains, where they have turned to isolation and simple living as a means of survival. With circumstances forcing them to work and live together, Chris and Zach must work through their bitterness and old wounds, until they realize that even if loving each other was hard, losing each other would be harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a gigantic debt of gratitude to the ever-lovely Rabidchild for holding my hand and never letting go of it the whole time I was thrashing my way through this monster. She was alpha and beta but she was also cheerleader and plot-bouncer-offer and therapist and basically a saint for putting up with all my wailing. This absolutely would not be what it is without her. 
> 
> Also, a huge thank you to Jouissant for being endlessly encouraging, and also for giving me invaluable feedback on the first draft that helped me iron out the weak spots without losing my mind. And thank you to Jupiter, who was nice enough to read through the first couple chapters and encourage me at a time where I was ready to throw it all out the window. 
> 
> And finally, I am just the most ecstatic writer in the world right now thanks to TWO wonderful artists, SilentBridge and Nostalgia-in-Starlight. You can see the beautiful graphics SilentBridge made [here](http://silent-bridge.tumblr.com/post/134437717349/pinto-big-bang-2015-dearly-departed-by-semper-ama), and NiS’s amazing illustrations [here](http://nostalgia-in-starlight.tumblr.com/post/134437718636/pinto-big-bang-submission-art-for-semper-amas). I am so grateful for both of you and in awe of your talent! Thank you so much for taking an interest in my fic! :D
> 
> This story has been about a year in the making, and I still can hardly believe that I finished it. Thanks to everyone who cheered me on, reblogged snippets, and listened to me whine about it on tumblr. I love everyone in this bar. <3 I hope you enjoy!
> 
>   
>   
>  Credit for the cover goes to SilentBridge!

The gas light has been on for longer than Chris cares to think about by the time he turns the car off the main road and onto the gravel. Not long ago, he would have been cursing the little pings he hears as the wheels spit rocks up into the undercarriage. He bitched at Zach once for driving the damn thing in the _rain_ , but now, he barely gives a second thought to all the scratches and dents his once-beloved Mercedes is probably suffering. It will be little better than scrap metal in a matter of miles anyway. He just needs it to keep moving long enough to get to where he’s going.

The car pitches and yaws over the ruts, and Chris shoots a concerned look over his shoulder at the back seat. The jostling isn’t disturbing Zach in the slightest. He is as unresponsive as ever, his gaunt face drawn into a permanent grimace, his eyes rolling beneath their lids. Chris wonders, not for the first time, what he’s dreaming about. It has been days since Zach stopped his inarticulate mumbling. Chris feels like he is looking at him through a plate glass window, unable to get close enough to touch or hear him. There have been moments when he thought Zach’s lips were about to form his name, but it was probably wishful thinking. Zach doesn’t have a reason to call out for him anymore.

Chris frowns and turns his attention back to the road ahead, his eyes scanning for a break in the trees. When he sees the first glimpse of the faded green roofs, his heart starts pounding, and he reaches into the passenger seat to pat Skunk on the head.

“We made it, buddy,” he says under his breath.

Skunk’s ears twitch, but he doesn’t even lift his head from his paws. He has been listless. Most of his time has been spent curled up at Zach’s side, watchful and expectant, like he’s waiting for someone to come and take his daddy away. Chris hopes whatever animal intuition he is tapping into proves to be wrong.

Chris stops the car outside the large building closest to the road. A weather-worn sign that says LODGE in juvenile block letters hangs over the double doors out front. This used to be a children’s summer camp, according to the man at the rest stop who pointed Chris this direction. It seems he at least wasn’t lying about that part. Whether the rest was truthful still remains to be seen.

After one more glance in the back seat, Chris opens the car door and levers himself out into the chilly San Bernardino mountain air. He slams the door unnecessarily hard behind him, hoping to announce his presence to anyone nearby. Hoping that someone _is_ nearby. This is a gamble. There isn’t enough gas in the tank to get back to the highway.

He makes it all the way to the doors of the lodge before he hears the sound of footsteps on the path behind him. When he turns around, he sees two people emerging from the trees, wary expressions on their faces. Chris lifts his hands automatically, the universal gesture for _I come in peace_.

The pair stops with some distance still between them. Chris stands his ground and looks them over, figuring that if they’re going to assess him, he might as well assess them too. One of them is a solidly built woman who looks to be somewhere in her mid-50s, her red hair liberally streaked with gray and yanked into a haphazard ponytail. She is dressed like a field hand—flannel and denim and sturdy boots—and she has an authoritative, no-nonsense air about her that has Chris immediately pegging her as someone with some weight to throw around. Her companion is a tall, bulky Hispanic man. His t-shirt is dark with sweat, despite the slight chill in the air, and there is a dirty towel hanging around his neck. He hovers just a hair behind the woman like he’s her bodyguard—and he’d probably be a good one, given that Chris is pretty sure those giant hands could snap him in half—but he isn’t looking at Chris like he’s a threat. His gaze is merely appraising, curious.

“Uhh, hi,” Chris says, breaking the silence. He looks over his shoulder at the car, then back to the strangers. “I’m, uhh—”

“Captain Kirk,” the man says. A smile splits his face, and he elbows the woman in the ribs. “That’s Captain Kirk.”

“Yes, Manny, I’m aware.” The woman doesn’t seem nearly as thrilled by that fact, and Chris, for his part, has no idea how to act. It’s one thing to get recognized under normal circumstances. It’s another thing entirely to get recognized under _these_ circumstances. He doubts either of them is about to ask for his autograph.

“I’m Susan,” the woman says, saving him from having to come up with some faux-charming quip. “This is Manny. You’re Chris.” She glances at the car. “Are you here alone?”

Chris glances at the car again, then squares his shoulders. “I have my husband with me. He’s sick.”

He expects pushback. Hell, he half expects them to tell him to get back in his car and leave—not that he could do that if he wanted to. Instead, the stern lines of Susan’s face relax just a fraction. She stares at the Mercedes for a long moment, then gives Manny a pat on the arm before nodding to the car. “Go help him.”

Such kindness should be a relief, but Chris frowns, confused. “Aren’t you...aren’t you worried you’ll—”

“Honey,” Susan cuts him off, “if any of us were going to catch it, we would have by now.”

It’s not exactly a peer-reviewed scientific study, but it helps to hear another voice say out loud what Chris has suspected for days. When Zach first collapsed, Chris went through a gamut of emotions—starting with worry, passing through fear, and arriving at a darkly romantic notion that he would play nurse until he inevitably got sick too and died at Zach’s side. But now it’s clear that his martyr complex won’t get to scratch that particular itch. He never got sick, and Zach only got sicker.

Manny hoists Zach out of the back seat, holding him like a swooning princess. Inside the car, Skunk has his paws up on the window and is barking in distress. Chris feels his pain. It makes a gruesome picture, Zach limp and frail in Manny’s thick arms. If his eyes weren’t still twitching with whatever fever dream he is trapped in, Chris would think he was a corpse.

“You can put them in Cabin 17,” Susan says. “I’ll send Harmony along.” At Chris’s quizzical look, she adds, “She’s a doctor.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think a doctor can do anything for him,” Chris says. He is surprised at how bitter he sounds. He keeps expecting the bitterness to give way to weariness and defeat, but it hasn’t yet. “Unless she can get some food in him.”

Susan stares him down for a moment. “Speaking of food, when’s the last time _you_ ate?”

It strikes Chris as a stupid question, so he decides not to answer it. He doesn’t care about food for himself right now. Getting Zach settled is more important, and Manny is already headed off down a trail that curves around the far side of the lodge and off into the trees. Chris heads to the car to get their suitcase so he can follow.

He doesn’t expect Susan to come up beside him and peer into the trunk, then look up at his profile. She’s even shorter than he realized. He must have at least a foot on her. Still, she seems unafraid to stand toe to toe with him.

“If you want to take care of him, you have to take care of you. You’re skin and bones. And it would be good if you met the rest of the group.”

“I can meet them tomorrow.” Chris jerks the bag out of the trunk and slams it shut with unnecessary force. He walks to the passenger side door and opens it so Skunk can jump down to the ground. “If a doctor is going to look at him, I want to be there.”

When he turns and looks Susan in the eye again, her jaw is set like she is gearing up to argue. After a moment, though, she nods once. It’s clear she isn’t used to being defied. It rubs him the wrong way, but he isn’t going to worry about it now. The fact is, he can’t take care of Zach and ensure their survival on his own. He needs her more than she needs him.

“Alright,” Susan says. “17 is down the path behind the lodge there. I’ll have someone send some food to you.”

Chris should thank her, but the words stick in his throat. It’s all happening too fast. An hour ago, he would have said there was a 50/50 chance that he was driving them out into the middle of nowhere to die. This sudden surfacing of hope is difficult to assimilate. 

They aren’t out of the woods yet though. In fact, they are smack dab in the middle of the woods, literally and figuratively. 

Chris sighs and shoulders his bag. Instead of thanking her, he says, “We’ll make it up to you.”

Susan narrows her eyes at him. “We, huh?” 

The words slide through his ribcage like a knife, right into his heart. The shock of it takes his breath, so all he can do is turn away from her and blink away the burning in his eyes. He scuffs his feet in the dirt, then turns around and sidesteps her.

“Bring something for Zach to eat too,” he says as he starts off down the trail. “He isn’t dead yet.”

\----

_Katie isn’t answering her phone, and Chris has lost track of time. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Zach became unresponsive, or since he last kept down any food. It’s hard to believe they were sitting in a pristine office poring over divorce papers just three weeks ago._

_Was that the same day the news channels started talking about the virulent second wave? He can’t fucking remember. Maybe it’s been longer than that. He has been too preoccupied with his personal life to pay much attention to current events, but he guesses the snow on his television set confirms that this has moved well outside the bounds of a current event and into the realm of an apocalyptic one. When he went outside and started the car, all that came out of the radio was a grating emergency alert tone._

_They ran out of food yesterday. Completely ran out. Chris boiled the last of the rice and could barely choke it down—only forced himself to because he has to stay alive for Zach. Zach, who he can’t even get to take water anymore. In desperation, Chris has been dribbling water into his mouth with a dropper, but he’s not positive it’s all making it to his stomach._

_It’s becoming clearer and clearer: they can’t stay here. Isolation seems safe—Chris doesn’t know what to expect outside those doors, doesn’t know if the world outside will be recognizable at all. But they can’t stay here._

_Katie isn’t answering her phone. Chris tugs the covers up to Zach’s chin, brushes his hair off his sweaty forehead, and goes to pack a bag._

\----

The cabin is like a crypt. This was a summer camp, not a luxury campground for the rich and famous, and the lodgings are reflective of that fact. There are only two small windows in the squat wooden building, high up on each of the side walls, and the sun shines weakly through the dusty panes, letting in just enough light to illuminate all the things Chris wishes he couldn’t see—the fine sheen of sweat on Zach’s face, the insect carcasses in the corners, the stains on the sheets.

Even though being stuck inside is unbearable, Chris doesn’t leave Zach’s side for two days. Other people come and go, starting with the doctor, Harmony. She is a tiny, severe Asian woman that Chris guesses is close to his age. She shows up every three hours or so like clockwork to check Zach’s vitals and to leave Chris jars of pale broth to spoon painstakingly past Zach’s cracked lips. Most of it ends up leaking out of the corners of his mouth and onto the pillow, but Harmony keeps bringing it, and Chris keeps feeding it to him, because it’s either that or watch him waste away.

After Harmony, Susan is the most common visitor. She seems to like to keep tabs on everything going on in The Camp—that’s what everyone calls it, just “The Camp”—and even though things are unchanged every time she visits Cabin 17, she keeps showing up, keeps making small talk. Chris tries to make it obvious he doesn’t want her there, glowering and giving her one word answers, but she doesn’t take the hint.

She brings the others by in twos and threes to introduce them. There is the cook, a 70-year-old woman named Vera. Her four-year-old grandson, Oliver, is the only child in The Camp. He reminds Chris far too much of his nephew, which makes him snappish and standoffish until Vera finally herds him away. Then there is Tristan, a former model and aspiring actor in his mid-twenties who blushes prettily when he shakes Chris’s hand and refuses to look at the bed, at Zach. The resident animal expert is a middle-aged man named Henry, who used to make his living taking care of the most spoiled lap dogs in Hollywood and now plays veterinarian to goats, a horse, and a bunch of chickens, under Susan’s close supervision. 

The last three to visit are somewhat familiar faces. The man, Kyle, is the one Chris met on the road, at the rest stop, and he guesses the two women, who introduce themselves as Janine and Naomi, were the dark shapes he saw in the back of Kyle’s Range Rover. While Chris was at the water fountain filling a bottle and wetting a cloth for Zach’s forehead, Naomi and Janine were convincing Kyle to write down directions to The Camp.

“We saw you had a sick person in the back seat,” Naomi says, her voice soft and kind. She has big, brown, doe eyes and hair the color of acorns that lays in one long braid down her back. The first thing she does after shaking Chris’s hand is sit on the edge of Zach’s bed like she belongs. “We wanted to help.”

Naomi, the gentle artist, strikes a strong contrast to the other two. Kyle’s blond hair is shaggy and unkempt, and he has two full sleeves of tattoos. Janine is dark-skinned and muscular, like a gymnast—which makes sense when she informs him she is, or was, an officer in the Navy. She and Kyle met in a bar a couple weeks back. After a few shots, Kyle, who was a truck driver, told her he was thinking up holing up at a campground in the mountains until all of this blew over. Every time he drove through the San Bernardino National Forest, he was struck by how isolated and peaceful it was, like the trees and the hills protected it from the rest of the world. The plan seemed good enough when they were drunk and seemed good enough when they were sober too. It was better than hanging around in the city and watching the world fall apart. When they found out that Naomi, Kyle’s next door neighbor, was still alive and had nowhere to go, they brought her along.

Kyle scouted ahead and found this place, found Susan and Manny already here, then went back to get Janine and Naomi. And here they are. Chris guesses he should thank them. He doesn’t know where he would have ended up if they didn’t take pity on him at that rest stop. He probably would still be driving. Maybe Zach would be dead.

But as long as Zach still hasn’t woken up, it’s hard to thank anyone for anything. Instead, he musters just enough patience to grunt one-word answers to their questions and tolerate their presence until they finally sense that he wants to be alone. 

As the days pass, Zach remains unchanged. Chris knew that finding other people wouldn’t bring a magic cure, but he still is disappointed that the presence of a real doctor doesn’t lead to any improvement at all. By day three, his mental state has deteriorated back to where it was before he packed Zach and Skunk in the car and struck out in desperation. He once again finds himself resisting the urge to curl up beside him in bed and give up. 

It’s complicated, seeing Zach like this. Chris wants him to get better so badly, but he’s afraid of what will happen when he does. They aren’t supposed to be together anymore, but here they are, sharing a tiny cabin, living among strangers, with nowhere to escape to. Chris sleeps every night in a bed that’s not six feet away from Zach’s. He lies awake, listening to Zach wheeze, always fearing this labored breath will be the last one he hears. No matter how much he tries to tell himself that he has lost Zach even if he does live through this, his heart doesn’t seem to want to listen.

Maybe Zach will wake up and maybe he won’t, but in the end, does it really matter?

\----

_Zach doesn’t even have the decency to call before he shows up. He still has his key, because Chris hasn’t asked for it back, wasn’t_ planning _to ask for it back, but if he had known Zach would walk in on him unannounced, he would have reclaimed it a long time ago. Dealing with Zach requires preparation these days. It’s not something that can be sprung on him. And yet._

_Chris walks in from the garden and Zach is just standing there, sorting through the mail. Well, a version of Zach, anyway. This one looks nothing like the one Chris saw two weeks ago, the one that stared him down from across the over-large mahogany table with his lawyer at his side. It’s early June, and a beautiful day outside, but Zach is wearing a sweater. His face is sallow, his skin oily. When he turns toward him, Chris sees that there are purple smudges under his eyes and his bangs are stringy, greasy, falling unattractively into his face so he has to keep pushing them back with bony hands._

_“Did you go to the hospital?” he asks before Zach has a chance to say anything._

_Zach scowls and doesn’t bother looking up from the envelopes in his hands. He tosses a few bills onto the table with a complete lack of concern, then slots his thumb into another one and starts ripping it open. “Do you have any idea what it takes to get into a hospital right now, Chris? You have to be a breath away from dying.”_

_Chris doesn’t know. He stopped watching the news weeks ago—turned off the TV when he walked out the door to meet with Zach and the divorce lawyers and never turned it back on again. The news anchor had been saying it could be apocalyptic, mass human extinction, and the hysteria left a bad taste in his mouth. He’d heard it enough. Ebola. Swine flu. Bird flu. People died, but the world kept turning. They would make movies about it in ten years—the heroic doctors who kept the world from ending, a tearjerker starring Jennifer Lawrence and whoever the Hollywood heartthrob flavor of the week happens to be._

_It certainly won’t be him. He’s done. He’d rather gnaw off his own arm than set foot on another movie set._

_“Of course you haven’t been watching the news,” Zach says with a sigh, reading Chris’s silence with pinpoint accuracy. Even now, he isn’t looking at Chris’s face. He’s skimming the piece of paper in his hand with practiced disinterest. It would be more convincing if he didn’t look like he was struggling to stay on his feet—and if Chris didn’t know him down to the very last eyelash, the very last artfully bored expression. Zach is a much better actor when cameras are pointed at him. “How’s hermit life treating you?”_

_“How’s single life treating you?” Chris spits, unable to stop himself from sinking to Zach’s level. “I hope being a free man hasn’t taken the thrill out of hooking up with all that desperate jailbait.”_

_“I’m not free yet,” Zach says breezily._

_Rage rises up Chris’s throat like bile, but he doesn’t get a chance to get the last word. Zach forestalls him with a wet cough that has him doubling over, hacking into the crook of his elbow, one hand reaching out to steady himself on the table. Chris nearly rushes to his side, but he hesitates. If Zach is feeling well enough to come here and leave a new set of tire treads all over Chris’s heart, then he’s well enough to cough it out, get himself together, and leave._

_When Zach straightens up, he wipes the side of his mouth and finally he meets Chris’s eyes. “I’m just here to talk about the house.”_

_As far as de-escalation goes, it’s a poor attempt. Chris tenses even more, his hands balling into fists. “I told you, and I told your stupid fucking lawyer, I’m not selling. This is_ my _goddamn house, Zach, and you can’t—”_

_He doesn’t get to finish his rant. Zach’s arm, the one supporting his weight against the table, collapses, and he goes all the way to the floor, landing on one elbow and one hip and grimacing in pain. This time, Chris can’t stay still. He’s kneeling by Zach and palming the side of his neck before he even has time to blink._

_“I think I’m pretty sick,” Zach whispers. His skin is hot and dry under Chris’s hand._

_“It’s just the flu.” The irritation still hasn’t left Chris’s voice, though he’s touching Zach as gently as if he were made of porcelain. “You should be in bed.”_

_Zach lets out a short bark of laughter, which turns into another round of coughing that has him leaning into Chris’s shoulder and groaning when it’s over. He lifts his eyes to Chris’s face, and the corner of his mouth curves upward in a tired, rueful grin. “You really need to turn on your television, Christopher.”_

_Those are the last words he says for a while._

\----

Zach opens his eyes, just for a moment, on the eighth day.

It’s pure luck that Chris happens to be there when it happens. He has the front and back door of the cabin pushed wide and is sweeping the dust and dry leaves and dead bugs out of the corners and from under the beds. They have been at The Camp for a week, and Chris has an official job—he found the defunct garden, and Susan immediately jumped on his suggestion that he be the one to tend it—so he figures he might as well make their new home more livable. He is already considering renovations—widening the windows so they can get more light inside, adding a shower stall out back. Keeping busy is the only thing that keeps a lid on the sucking pit of agony in his gut. 

He is bending low and pushing the broom under Zach’s bed, gunning for the couple of cricket corpses near the back wall, when he accidentally jostles the bed frame. He thinks nothing of it at first—Zach is too far gone to notice anyway—but then there is a sound, a cognizant sound, and Chris freezes.

A handful of seconds pass before he can bring himself to look at Zach’s face. And Zach is looking back at him, more or less. His eyes are only open a tiny fraction, but it’s enough for Chris to get a sense that Zach _sees_ him. The broom handle hits the floor with a clatter. Zach flinches, his eyelids fluttering. Chris falls hard to his knees and scrabbles for Zach’s hand.

“Zach?”

Zach’s throat works for a moment, and his lips part around the beginnings of a soundless word. His fingers twitch like they are trying to clutch Chris’s, but he doesn’t seem to have the strength. He shuts his eyes again, and Chris holds his breath while he watches the fluttery rise and fall of his chest. Skunk, who has hardly budged from the foot of Zach’s bed, lifts his head and whines.

“Where…?” Zach can’t get out the full question, but Chris knows what he means.

“We’re safe,” he says, squeezing Zach’s hand a little harder.

A weak cough works its way out of Zach’s throat, and Chris lays a hand on his chest in an attempt to soothe him from the outside in. Zach’s breathing is labored and crackly, like his lungs are full of the same dead leaves that litter the floor. But he’s still breathing, and that’s all that matters. Chris wants to put his ear to Zach’s chest and listen until he believes everything is going to be okay.

Zach’s fingers flutter again, and this time he manages to get a weak grip on Chris’s hand. He opens his mouth to speak. Chris leans closer and moves his fingers to Zach’s jaw.

“Why are you here?” Zach whispers. 

Chris pulls his hand back like he’s been burned. It’s the question he’s been dreading, but he hadn’t expected to have to answer it so soon. And even though the answer is simple enough, he isn’t sure how to say it. Zach collapsed on his—on _their_ —floor, and it was either carry him to bed or set him out with the garbage piling up by the curb. 

So the short answer is that Chris is here because Zach is here, and Zach is here because Chris is here, but that’s probably not what Zach is really getting at.

“We’re at an old campground in the mountains,” Chris says. “I ran out of food. I had to bring you here.” 

Zach rolls his head back and forth on the pillow once, like he’s shaking his head, but Chris has no idea what he’s shaking his head at. He doesn’t dare reach for his hand again, so instead he curls his fingers around Zach’s forearm and concentrates on the weak, hummingbird-wing flitter of his pulse. 

When Zach speaks again, it’s to ask the worst possible questions. “Joe? Mom?”

Chris squeezes Zach’s arm so hard for a moment that he leaves white fingerprints and Zach’s face screws up in pain. How can he possibly answer this question?

“We can talk more when you’re feeling better,” he says. Assuming Zach will get better. Assuming it isn’t the cruel breath of hope before things take a turn for the worse. “Go back to sleep.”

Sleeping is not what Zach has been doing. It’s not violent enough a word. But maybe sleeping is what he will do now, complete with sweet dreams and some amount of renewed strength in the morning. Chris can only hope.

He’s glad to find that there is still hope left in him at all.

\----

Zach opens his mouth for the spoon, over and over again, but if looks could kill, Chris would be six feet under.

“For Christ’s sake,” Chris mutters. “You’d think I was torturing you.”

It might be a manner of torture. The watery oatmeal doesn’t look appetizing, and Chris doubts the tiny bit of honey Harmony let him drizzle on top is doing much to improve the taste. But he’s going to make Zach eat every last bite anyway, because it won’t be long before he is strong enough to refuse him. 

“I want real food,” Zach says. He is pouting, in his own way—which means he’s pricklier than usual and hell-bent on being contrary.

“You’ll just throw it up,” Chris says, and wipes Zach’s chin with the rag in his hand. Zach makes an indignant sound and snatches it out of his grasp.

“I can wipe my own face.” Even that small movement was difficult for him though, Chris can tell. He watches as Zach’s arm falls back to the bed and his head wobbles on his neck.

“Maybe that’s enough for now,” he says, placing the spoon back in the bowl, but before he can turn away and get up, Zach puts his hand on his wrist, a silent plea. 

“No, I want to finish it. Please.” 

Chris would have to be heartless to ignore a request like that, even if it was coming from someone other than Zach. He sighs and lifts the spoon again. Zach opens his mouth like a baby bird. He has the plumage to match, glossy tufts of hair sticking up at odd angles. Chris would smooth them down for him, but he’s already been glared at enough for one day.

“You trust these people, right?” Zach asks around his mouthful of oatmeal, pulling Chris’s attention away from his state of relative dishevelment. 

Chris shrugs one shoulder, scoops up another bite. “Didn’t really have a choice.”

The pinched expression on Zach’s face makes it obvious what he thinks of that particular line of reasoning. But fuck that. He doesn’t get a say. He was unconscious and dying at the time, and if he thinks Chris was just going to give up, then he’s crazy. 

“The way I saw it, it couldn’t get worse,” Chris says. “I was looking at certain death or possible death, and I chose possible death. And here we are, both alive.”

“It’s only been a couple weeks. They could still kill us in our sleep.”

“And what would be the fucking logic in that?” 

“That’s your problem, Christopher,” Zach says. It’s mind-boggling how haughty he can be when he’s weak as a kitten and being fed like a baby. “You are incurably naive.”

Chris snorts. That’s Zach-ese for _You’re absolutely right; it would make no sense whatsoever, but I’m not going to admit it._ His inability to be wrong used to be endearing. Chris used to be great at laughing it off. No one could withstand this level of constant picking and pecking forever though, and he doesn’t have the energy to withstand it now. He shoves the spoon into Zach’s mouth a little too aggressively this time, clacking it against his teeth and earning another death glare.

“You’re only alive now because of them, and because of me,” Chris reminds him, for what little good it’ll do. “God forbid you show a little gratitude.”

“I never asked you to take care of me.” Zach jerks his chin away when Chris lifts the spoon to his face this time. Cutting off his nose to spite his face, as usual.

Chris doesn’t believe him, anyway. He has thought about it a lot, and he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Zach showed up at the house that day. It’s too much to hope that he wanted to be near him when he was sick and scared, but it seems clear that he did _need_ him. If Chris can’t be wanted, he’ll settle for being needed. He’ll settle for spooning mush into Zach’s mouth while Zach looks at him like he’s wishing he could make him disappear, because that’s better than the alternative.

“Do you want the rest of this or not?” Chris asks, wiggling his hand back and forth in front of Zach’s mouth. 

Zach lets out a long sigh, but his attempt at being pissy and dramatic is cut short by a feeble bout of coughing. Chris sets the bowl down on his knees and reaches for Zach’s shoulder and his hand. When Zach’s fingers clutch his, he squeezes them back, holding on until the coughing passes and Zach is breathing normally again. And then he holds on a little longer. 

“I need to get out of this bed,” Zach says. His thumb slides over Chris’s wrist, but he doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s doing it. A moment later, he pulls his hand away and clutches the blanket that’s draped across his legs. 

“And then what are you going to do?” Chris asks. One of his knuckles pops, and he looks down, noticing how his fist is clenched on top of his thigh. He’s scared, but he won’t let himself think about what he’s scared of.

Zach looks at Chris, and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. Chris almost tells him not to do that—his lips are parched earth already, striped with barely-healed fissures—but a vision of Zach smiling wide and tossing him a tube of chapstick flashes through his mind. He huffs and looks down at the oatmeal instead.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go, do I?” Zach asks.

Chris doesn’t feel like being gentle. He doesn’t even look up when he speaks. “Everything’s gone, Zach. Everyone’s gone.”

\----

_”It ain’t over until he signs on the dotted line, Chris,” Joe says in his ear. “You know that.”_

_Is anything ever over with Zach, he wonders? Is he just twin threads of happiness and misery stitched through the entirety of Chris’s life? The time before him is so fuzzy it may as well not exist. He can’t imagine a time after him. Everything is Zach. Zach is everything. If that weren’t the case, then maybe Chris wouldn’t be so goddamn angry._

_“And what if he does?” Chris asks. “What if he signs? It certainly seems like he wants to.”_

_“Well, what the fuck does a piece of paper mean anyway?”_

_Chris wants to believe it. He does. But if marriage is built on a piece of paper, can’t a piece of paper destroy it too? Maybe people are fucking stupid for building relationships on things as flimsy as paper._

\----

The garden started out as a reason for Chris to get out of the cabin. At first it was because he could only stand to spend so much time mopping sweat off Zach’s brow with dirty rags and changing his soiled sheets and kissing his dry, cracked hands. The knowledge that he could do nothing to save Zach weighed him down in every waking moment—and most of his sleeping ones.

But then Zach woke up, and Chris needed to get away for other reasons. If Zach had been bitchy and resentful before—before he got sick, before the world changed—that’s nothing compared to how he is now. He sulks all day, can’t seem to distract himself with reading, sleeps fitfully, and projects a cloud of generalized rage so thick it is suffocating. It doesn’t matter how much Chris can empathize with him. He still can’t put up with it. He has succeeded in saving Zach’s life, but he can’t save his spirit. Or what is left of their relationship.

The plants he could save. The plants he did save—though not nearly enough of them.

By the others’ best guess, The Camp had been abandoned for at least a year before they claimed it as their own, and the garden had suffered for it. Weeds had overrun the little patch of earth, the tomatoes had been brutalized by the birds, and the lettuce was completely unsalvageable. Chris had to work for almost a whole week just to figure out what could be saved and what couldn’t. Then there was weeding, pruning, and replanting. Some of the plants had to be moved inside so they could be babied. Many didn’t make it.

The carrots, kale, and potatoes were the survivors in the end. Chris had to start the tomatoes and bell peppers from scratch, but the plants are already germinating in their pots in the kitchen window and will probably be ready to move into the garden in a couple more weeks. There is a little fruit too—some blueberries and strawberries on the edge of the garden, plus blackberries and rhubarb he found growing wild on other parts of the land. It’s a good start.

The first time Zach ventured out of the cabin, moving slow on his unsteady legs, Chris brought him to the garden to show him his handiwork. He pointed out each patchwork section, talked with pride about the chicken wire fence Manny helped him build to keep the animals out of it. He looked at Zach and expected approval or congratulations or hope that they could survive here. Zach shielded his eyes against the sun, stared at the garden for a couple silent minutes, then turned and started to walk away. When Chris called after him, he paused, just for a moment, his shoulders stiff.

“We should get some citrus,” he said, his head turned to the side so Chris could only see his profile, not his expression.

Today, Chris is planting a tangerine tree. He wanted oranges at first, like the ones in his orchard at home, but tangerines have a better chance of surviving the cold weather and altitude. After Zach’s suggestion, Chris went to Manny, who listened to his request, gave him a wink, went off in the truck, and came back with a young tree in a pot. Chris didn’t even ask how he managed to find it. He is learning that Manny is, among other things, an excellent scavenger. 

There are things Chris still hasn’t told Zach. He thinks about them as the shovel bounces off the rocky soil, making his shoulders hurt and head ring. He thinks about when he left Zach, curled up like a lone parenthesis in the back seat, while he walked up to Joe’s door and rang the bell. He ended up having to shoulder the door open. The place empty and ransacked—one of the back windows was smashed, probably by looters, and the pantry was empty.

Maybe Joe went back to Pittsburgh to check on Margo. Maybe he got sick and went to the hospital, and some resilient doctor was taking care of him. Chris couldn’t wait around to find out. He went back out to the car, started it up, and headed down the road.

When he called Margo’s cell, it went straight to voicemail.

He thinks about his own parents, and the reverberations of the shovel hit him harder, rattling his teeth and his thoughts. He left them behind, under two fresh mounds of dirt in the back yard of the house that he grew up in. They died in bed next to each other, they were buried next to each other, against their wishes. Both wanted their ashes scattered, like Grandma, but concessions had to be made when Zach was maybe dying in the back seat. 

Everything is gone, and Chris is prioritizing tangerines because Zach told him to. The pile of dirt next to his foot is still small when he has to stop and lean on the handle of the shovel to catch his breath. It reminds him too much of the pile that rose next to those shallow graves he dug weeks ago, between fits of dry-heaving into the dirt. 

He lets himself rest, but he doesn’t let himself think about it. It won’t do him any good to dwell on the people who aren’t here anymore when he has his hands full with the one who is. Zach told him they need citrus, so he’s planting citrus. It’s just that simple.


	2. Chapter 2

“Have any of you seen Zach?” Chris asks, peeking inside the kitchen at the group gathered around the rickety old table. Susan is sitting at one end writing in a notebook, her red hair falling in her face. Manny sits next to her with his feet propped up on an adjacent chair, his eyes half-lidded like he’s just been taking a pre-dinner siesta. Vera is standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot. They all glance at him, then go back to what they were doing.

“He’s down at the barn,” Manny grunts. “He wanted to feed the animals.”

“And you just _let him_?” The words are out of his mouth before Chris realizes how crazy he sounds. The others seem to come to this realization at the same time, because he is met with three pairs of scrutinizing eyes and mouths quirked with varying degrees of amusement.

“He’s a grown man, isn’t he?” Manny says, crossing his arms over his chest and raising his eyebrows.

“Harmony gave him the all-clear,” Susan adds. 

Chris frankly doesn’t give a fuck. The doctor could say Zach is stronger than he was before he fell ill, and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. He nearly died, and now he’s going to go gallivanting around The Camp like nothing ever happened, without even letting Chris know what he’s doing? No. No, that is not okay.

It’s all he can do not to unleash that rant on the unsuspecting bystanders in the kitchen. He knows it isn’t their fault, but it’s hard not to blame them a little. They probably wouldn’t be so cavalier if it was their own loved one who couldn’t even stand on his own two feet not that long ago. It just goes to show that he can’t trust anyone but himself to look after Zach. He lets the kitchen door bang shut behind him and sets off in search of his errant ex-husband.

The barn comes into view before Zach does, and Chris can’t help but fear that he might not be where people expect him to be. He is almost even with the pasture when there is movement over by the barn doors and Zach emerges, holding a bale of hay by the strings, Skunk trotting along at his heels. His gaze flicks to Chris, and his jaw visibly tightens, but he doesn’t say a word, just walks right by him like he’s not even there.

Chris can see Zach’s ribs through his thin tank top, and it’s fucking unbearable.

“I thought we agreed you were going to wait a couple more weeks,” he says, watching Zach hoist the bale over the wooden fence. On the far side of the patch of greenish pasture, near the wall of mossy tree trunks, the animals lift their heads. It should be a peaceful sight—the bucolic setting carved out of the middle of the forest, the circle of blue sky hemmed in by green pine peaks. Instead, it makes Chris claustrophobic.

“We didn’t agree to anything.” Zach turns his back on Chris and steps up onto the bottom rail of the fence, swings his leg over, and hops down on the other side. Only then does he meet Chris’s eyes, like he needed to put a barrier between them before he could bear to do it.

Chris stares at him for a moment, biting down hard on his bottom lip and absently twisting his wedding ring around his finger. When he notices what he’s doing, he scowls and shoves both of his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

“You’re not strong enough yet,” he says. 

“I’ve got to pull my weight, Chris. I’m done discussing it.” Zach grabs the hay bale again. “You’re not my mother.”

It’s a low blow—invoking the M-word. Zach only said it because he knew it would shut him up. Chris has tried to start a conversation about what’s happened to their families a couple times since Zach got well enough to get out of bed, but Zach lashed out at him so hard that now the entire subject makes him want to cower and hide.

When he looks up again, Zach has carried the hay over to the trough a few yards away and is cutting it open. The old sorrel nag—Rose—is already loping over, a handful of goats hot at her heels. Skunk has wriggled his way under the bottom of the fence and is running to meet the rest of the menagerie like he already considers himself one of them. 

Zach pulls the strings out from under the bale and breaks it up with his foot, just in time for the animals to reach it and dig in. Chris watches, feeling like a voyeur looking in on a happy scene he doesn’t belong to, while Zach reaches down and grasps a handful of the hay and feeds it directly into Rose’s mouth, then rubs vigorously at her face, the itchy spot between her eyes. 

Zach is wearing an easy smile now. Chris tries not to think about how he hasn’t made him smile like that in a long, long time.

“Zach,” he says, taking a few steps forward to lean against the fence. 

“What?” Zach doesn’t even turn around. He’s got a thumb in Rose’s ear now, rubbing while she chews and wickers, her tail swishing happily.

“Will you at least let me carry the hay down here the next few times?”

It pains him to think of Zach climbing up into the hay loft and getting the heavy bales down himself. They aren’t light, and Zach is still weak, no matter what he says. He has only been up and moving around for a couple of weeks. 

Chris can see Zach’s shoulders heave with a sigh before he turns around. “No, Chris, I’m not going to let you do all my work for me.” He reaches down to give one of the goats a pat, then heads back toward the fence, toward Chris. “Why are you even here? Don’t you have your own chores to be doing?”

“No,” Chris lies. He is supposed to be picking tomatoes for dinner, and he was going to do some weeding while he was at it, but that got pushed out of his mind as soon as Manny let slip that Zach was heading down to feed the animals. Just a week ago, Henry got kicked in the ribs by one of the goats. He had a bruise the size of a grapefruit for days. Just a bruise—nothing serious—and yet when Chris thinks about Zach getting hurt the same way, it makes his stomach knot up. To him, Zach is made of glass these days. There are so many things that could take him away for good, and so few of them are in Chris’s control. He could fall off the ladder in the barn and break his neck. He could get bitten by a rattlesnake on the walk down here. Rose could get spooked and trample him. Not all of these things are realistic fears, but Chris can’t seem to focus on the realistic much these days.

“Well, that must be nice,” Zach says, his voice deceptively even, “but I don’t need you pulling this hovery helicopter thing with me. So maybe you should _find_ something else to do.”

He is standing right on the other side of the fence from Chris now, close enough to touch, but Chris doesn’t dare. Zach has been completely opaque to him, treating him like nothing more than a guy he happens to bunk down with every night, and Chris knows that plucking at those boundaries will only make things worse. 

“What if I just kept you company?” Chris asks. He is proud of himself for not sounding desperate. “You still have to feed the chickens, right? I could help you.”

“ _No_ , Chris—” Zach starts, but Chris holds up a hand, cutting him off.

“Not because you need my help,” he lies. As far as he’s concerned, Zach does need his help. Someone has to make sure he isn’t over-exerting himself. Someone has to make sure he stays safe. But Zach’s pride would never accept that, so Chris tries to tell him what he wants to hear instead. “Just because it’d give me something to do.” 

Zach’s eyes flash with something that seems oddly like nervousness, and he looks away, chewing on his lip. His hands have settled between Chris’s on the fence. Chris considers brushing their fingers together just to see what happens.

“Please, just leave me alone.” There is finality in the tone of his voice. Chris knows well what will happen if he argues now—another ugly fight, another several steps backward, the possible dissolution of this shaky truce they have now. 

“Fine,” Chris says, gritting his teeth. He pushes off the fence and walks backward for a few steps, searching Zach’s face for any sign of remorse. He finds nothing. “Fine,” he repeats. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

“I might be a little late,” Zach says, already turning away.

“Whatever.” Chris kicks the dirt and turns on his heel. Whatever. Let Zach do what he wants. Even if what he wants is to avoid Chris at all costs. That must be what it’s really about, the reason why Zach was adamant about getting out of bed and out of the cabin again as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to be cooped up with Chris. It’s a recurring theme in their marriage.

No, it _was_ a recurring theme in their marriage. They don’t have a marriage anymore.

\----

_Zach is defiant when he walks into the room. He’s wearing a tie and his slacks are immaculately pressed and there isn’t a hair out of place. He looks Chris in the eye and flashes a sharp smile at him, stalks across the room like a fucking panther, sits down at the table, and folds his hands in front of him—and Chris wants to punch him in his stupid fucking smug face._

_His lawyer taps his arm. He must not be doing a good job of hiding his anger._

_They could have had the papers drawn up a while ago, but Chris has been dragging his feet on purpose, helped along by the fact that two years of marriage means they do have a lot of assets to divide. They bought cars together, furniture together. They have one bank account that is in both of their names. And there was no pre-nup, because it seemed silly at the time. It seems a lot less silly in hindsight._

_Chris has fought hard on everything, but he is fighting hardest of all about the house. Zach was fine being the one to move out, but things are still complicated. Everything about divorce is complicated. Even though it’s Chris’s house, Zach is still entitled to half of it in some way, whether it gets sold now or Chris buys out his share of it or it is sold down the road. But Chris is dragging his heels. Zach can’t have half of everything. He’s been chipping away at Chris for too long, has already taken too much, and Chris wants to hold on to what he has left._

_He has an ace up his sleeve though._

_Zach and his lawyer are conferring in soft voices. Chris doesn’t need to talk to his, because he arrived on time, like a decent person, and already got that part out of the way. He waits. Zach makes a face, clenches his jaw, meets Chris’s eyes across the table again._

_“You’re asking for partial custody of_ my dog _?”_

_Chris smirks, using his misbegotten triumph like a shield. It’s a low blow, he’ll admit it, but if Zach thought this whole process was going to be smooth and quiet and easy for him, then he was sorely mistaken. No one in the room actually believes Chris is going to get to keep Skunk for part of every week, but if it drags the whole thing out longer than it needs to be, then good._

_Honestly though, Chris doesn’t want to admit how much he’ll miss that dog. When Zach was out late with his friends, Skunk was the one curled up with Chris in bed. When Zach was too hungover to eat, Skunk was Chris’s breakfast companion, crunching at his dog dish while Chris fried eggs and cranked the radio up too loud just to annoy his sleeping husband. The thing about dogs, the thing that Chris envies the most, is that they don’t care if you love them back or not. They will keep on loving you unconditionally, even if you feed them late one day or don’t have time to take them for their evening walk. If people were capable of loving that way, Chris thinks maybe he and Zach would have made it._

_“He’s been living with me for over two years,” Chris points out, keeping his voice even. “He feels like he’s my dog too.”_

_“Well, he’s not your dog.” Zach’s tone is so icy that Chris almost shivers. It’s a satisfying feeling though, getting a rise out of him. “If you want one, go out and get your own.”_

_“Is there something else you’d be willing to take instead of Skunk?” Zach’s lawyer asks him. He’s a clay-faced man with round glasses and a bristly mustache. He’s about as intimidating as a potato bug._

_“Is that a serious question?” Chris asks._

_“What about the couch in the den? The one I wanted to take with me?” Zach says. “You love that couch. I’ll let you have it.”_

_How kind of him. He’ll trade Chris a couch for a dog. And what is he going to trade him for the two years of his life he can’t get back? What does he want in return for the hole he’s so graciously leaving in Chris’s heart?_

_“Yeah, fine, whatever. I’ll keep the couch. You take the dog. That seems perfectly fair.” He looks down at his watch. “But you know what? I’ve got someplace to be.”_

_“Chris, we still need to talk about the house.”_

_“Mr. Pine, we really do need to get through this.”_

_Their pleas fall on deaf ears. Chris is already halfway out the door. If Zach can show up late, then Chris should be allowed to leave early. This power play is exhausting, but he’s going to keep running with it, because once it’s over, it’s_ over _. Zach will probably go back to New York. It’ll probably be a matter of weeks before he shows up in the tabloids with another young, beautiful model on his arm. Chris isn’t ready for that. He doesn’t know if he could take it._

_Maybe he can’t keep postponing the inevitable forever, and maybe it’s only making things worse, but he doesn’t fucking care. He’s going to go into a future without Zach, kicking and screaming, or not at all._

\----

The Camp itself is not very big, but it’s big enough to accommodate their little group of eleven. The lodge and the detached kitchen, the shower building, the garden, and the fire pit are clustered near the dirt road that Chris drove in on, and trails shoot off from there in various, winding directions through the trees, like tentacles emanating from the body of a jellyfish. Five of those trails end in little cul-de-sacs of four cabins each. One trail snakes its way down to the squat white barn and the small pasture beyond, one winds its way toward the river, and one stretches out into the woods, seemingly going nowhere—probably a nature trail that snakes its way back around to another part of the camp.

Everything has a nostalgic, homey Americana feel to it. The cabins are a faded maroon with cute little brass numbers over the door. The barn looks like it was painted with honest-to-God whitewash. Some of the pine trees have initials and hearts carved into them, evoking visions of puppy love, cuffed jeans, popsicle-flavored kisses. At some point in the past, children came here on a break from the world of No. 2 pencils and spiral notebooks.

Now, it’s an escape from a very different kind of world. No one is going to sneak into Chris’s cabin at night and drag him off on a harrowing adventure through the dark woods. No one is going to feed him sloppy joes and mac-and-cheese. There is no comforting rustle of sleeping bags, no game of capture the flag to look forward to, and at the end of it all—if there even is an end—he won’t get to go home to the arms of his mother and father, chattering happily about the friends he made and the scrapes he got into. Nothing so minor as to be called a “scrape” will happen here at all. Whatever it is that Chris is carrying in the pit of his gut these days, it is about as far from childlike wonder as a feeling can get.

He knows he isn’t alone in that, no matter how he tries to cast himself as an especially bitter lone wolf. While everyone else at The Camp is functional and at least pleasant enough not to step on toes, they all have a bit of a walking dead quality to them, a lack of spark. Chris remembers the loud, vibrant people of Hollywood—people who glowed fluorescent under the SoCal sun—and it’s like this particular slice of humanity got painted with a whole different palette. Or maybe just got run through the wash one too many times, until their colors faded. 

Nighttime is the hardest for all of them. No one says so explicitly, but it’s obvious from the way they all linger over dinner until long after darkness has fallen completely and they’re forced to throw another log on the fire. Breakfast and lunch are usually eaten inside the lodge, with people drifting in and out in twos and threes before going about their work, but for the last meal of the day, they all gather outside together around the fire, a ring of uneasy faces marred by flickering shadows. The conversations are subdued. 

Chris, the city boy that he’s always been, can’t help but wonder what’s out there in the dark, beyond the firelight. Bears, maybe. And cougars. But it’s not only the local wildlife that scares him. What about other people? There have to be others out there like them—other survivors, other groups. He has seen enough post-apocalyptic movies—and _been_ in enough—to fuel his fears about what usually happens to people when society breaks down. The group has quite the stockpile of goods hidden away in Cabin 12—months’ worth of canned food that the other Camp residents had the foresight to bring with them when they came, several cans of gas that Manny has been using to fuel his truck and take him on scavenging runs. What they don’t have is guns. 

“How many people do you guys think are left?” he asks without looking up, pushing the last few bites of chili around in his bowl. It’s canned beans and onions, and tomatoes from the garden, and no meat. Christ, what he wouldn’t give for a burger.

“What do you mean?” It’s Janine who speaks. The sailor. Chris may be reluctant to get attached to any of these people, but he thinks he likes her—she’s competent and she looks like she could kick some serious ass, which is a comforting quality for a person to have when that person is on his side. It’s less comforting now, because she sounds like she wants to kick _his_ ass. No one ever seems to want to talk about the time before, or anything beyond today and tomorrow. 

“I mean...how many people do you think survived?” He looks up finally, but he avoids looking to his right, where Zach is sitting cross-legged in the dirt. As usual, he wandered into the circle late, after all the chairs were taken, his hair wet from his nightly dip. Chris never feels like he can breathe properly until he sees Zach coming up the path that leads from the river. He has daymares about him slipping and hitting his head on a rock and drowning, with no one there to save him. Or getting bitten by a water moccasin. Do they even have water moccasins in California? Chris doesn’t know. He wishes he had appreciated the power of the smartphone more before his turned into a brick. Never has he been in greater need of instant access to the Internet and all the world’s knowledge.

“I’d estimate that only five percent of people survived once they got sick,” says Harmony. Her eyebrows are pinched together and her mouth is turned down at the corners. “And another five percent were immune. So probably no more than ten percent of the population is left. Maybe even less in big cities.”

Forty million people left in the entire country. Those are 19th century numbers. Wild West numbers. 

Chris’s appetite is gone. This is a conversation he never should have started. The only way this works out for any of them is if they pretend this is what life has always been like. There were never red-eye flights to Paris, sipping champagne in first class. Starbucks—oh fuck, _Lamill_ —was just a figment of his imagination. He never had parents or a sister. And oh, hey, conveniently enough, he can pretend he was never married to Zach either. The little circle of gold that is permanently fused to his ring finger notwithstanding.

Fed up with himself, this night, these people, Chris gets up and starts walking back toward the kitchen, dish in hand. It may be a little creepy out in the dark, outside the ring of firelight, but at least he doesn’t have to look at all those faces and see his own despair reflected back at him. 

He isn’t surprised when he hears another pair of shoes crunch in the dirt behind him, but he is surprised when the person who walks up next to him is Zach.

“What’s eating you?” he asks. Chris almost wants to laugh. Leave it to him to ask the question in the most abrasive way possible, as if it’s _unreasonable_ for Chris to be upset.

“Everything’s eating me,” he says, looking down at their feet as they move in unison—right, left, right left. He supposes some part of him should be thankful for this. “It’s the end of the fucking world. I think I’m allowed to be a little antsy.”

Zach doesn’t have an immediate comeback to that, which is both a relief and not. Chris would kill for some small moment of understanding to pass between them, some sense that they are together in this, together in _anything_. 

“I have the divorce papers,” he blurts, completely without meaning to. “I brought them.”

Zach’s feet fall out of his field of vision. It takes Chris a moment to make himself stop walking and turn around, instead of just running away from him like a coward. It’s dark enough that he can’t really see the expression on Zach’s face, but the stiffness in his posture and the fists pressed into his thighs paint a vivid enough picture. 

“There’s something wrong with you,” Zach says. His voice is full of disgust, but Chris is the one tasting bile. “I can’t believe you’d even be thinking about that.”

“What am I supposed to be thinking about, huh? Please, fucking enlighten me, _Zachary_.”

“How about something relevant?” Zach takes a step forward, his eyes glinting like steel, a flash in the dark. “I think there are more important things to be worrying about right now than you and me.”

“Like _what_?” Chris’s voice is echoing, and the others can probably hear it back down by the fire, but he doesn’t care. They must already have some inkling of what’s going on here anyway. Chris called Zach his husband when they arrived, but he’s the only one wearing a wedding ring, and Zach barely talks to him, barely looks at him. “What is more important right now, Zach? Because from where I’m standing, there is nothing left for me to think about except you and me.”

He has no career, no family. All he has is Zach, and all Zach has is him. Once, that would have been comforting. Now, it feels like they are two betta fish dropped in the same tank.

“Yeah, and what if you sign them?” Zach asks. Because his own signature is of course already resting happily on that dotted line. “What happens then, Chris? We mozy on over to the county clerk and hope that it’s not closed on account of apocalyptic plague? I mean, Jesus. Do you even hear yourself?”

Chris doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to that, and he doesn’t want to stand there reopening old wounds, so he turns away again, resumes his path back toward the kitchen. He gets four or five steps before Zach catches up again, this time putting a hand on his shoulder and whirling him around. Chris jerks away violently, reflexively, and even in the dark, he can see the embarrassment flash across Zach’s face.

“I didn’t follow you to talk about us, okay?” Zach says. He puts his hands out like he’s gentling a spooked animal, but stops far short of actually touching Chris again, keeping a careful amount of distance between them. “I...what you asked back there got me thinking about...about Mom. And Joe. I’ve just been assuming they’re...but I think...I think I need to hear you say it.”

Chris’s heart sinks, even as he studies Zach. This isn’t how he pictured finally having this conversation. When they had their heart to heart about the people they’ve lost, Chris thought it would happen in careful, hushed tones, possibly at a time when they could put their arms around each other. Zach doesn’t look like he wants Chris’s arms around him right now. 

“When I tried to bring it up before, you bit my head off,” Chris says.

“And you’re surprised?” Zach asks. “The world fell apart, and you’re going to be mad at me for wanting a little time to process it?"

“What the fuck do you want, Zach?” Chris says wearily. “Just tell me what you want.”

Zach sways back on his heels a little, like he has to wind up for it. He looks down, and it throws the dark shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and under his eyes into stark relief. Chris wants to put his arms around him so badly, but he’s still seething, so he just tightens his grip on the bowl in his hands and waits.

“The day before,” Zach starts, carefully, “the day before I showed up at your place, Joe called me to say he heard from Mom and she thought she was getting sick. My aunt was going to go over there and check on her, and Joe was going to fly out in a couple days. I don’t know if he ever...did he call you?”

These are pointless questions. If Chris knew Zach’s family was alive, he would have told him already, and he knows Zach knows that. But if it’s important for Zach to hear, then Chris will have to make himself say it. “He never called me. I called him about fifty times it felt like, but I kept getting voicemail. Went by his house on the way out of town. He wasn’t there.”

“So he could be in Pittsburgh,” Zach breathes. “With Mom. They _could_ be okay.”

“Why wouldn’t they have called, Zach?” The cell networks stopped working just before Zach woke up. If Joe made it back home, he would at least have sent a text, surely. But likely the planes were all grounded by then, considering they were the reason the damn disease spread so fast anyway. Too little, too late. And if Joe never made it to the airport, well...Chris doesn’t want to let his brain go there. Doesn’t want Zach’s to either. “They’re gone. You can’t let yourself hope otherwise.”

Zach curls his lips over his teeth, a trick Chris knows he uses to keep them from trembling. He nods, crossing his arms over his stomach. Chris may be angry but he isn’t heartless, so he finally reaches out and puts a hand on Zach’s arm, giving it a brief squeeze before letting go again, withdrawing safely back into his own personal space bubble. 

When Zach looks up again, his eyes are shiny. “Your parents?”

“Buried them.” It should be much harder to say than it is. “No idea where Katie is.”

“Chris.” The word comes gently from Zach’s mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.” 

They stand in silence for a few moments, Zach staring at the ground and Chris staring at Zach. Chris wishes he could declare this a watershed moment and know that things are going to turn around now, Zach is going to let him in, but intuition tells him otherwise. They were snapping at each other a moment ago, and they’ll be snapping at each other again soon, he’s sure. Some things never change, even if everything else around them does.

“I’m gonna,” Chris says awkwardly, clearing his throat and lifting his bowl. Zach nods but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. A couple more seconds tick by before Chris makes himself turn and continue up the dark path alone.

\----

_”I want a divorce.”_

_Chris laughs and shakes his head, shifting the phone to his other shoulder so he can unlock the door and step into the house. “Don’t be so fucking dramatic.”_

_Zach has been living with Joe for two months, but that doesn’t have to mean anything. He could come back at any time. They just met for tacos last week, and even though the conversation felt strained, Chris has been sure they can patch things up. He is just waiting for Zach to come to his senses and tell him he’s ready to try again._

_“Chris, I’m not kidding.”_

_“Yeah, sure, okay. Have your lawyer call my lawyer,” he says as he throws the mail—still addressed to both him and Zach—onto the counter. The alarm is beeping, so he keys in the code, their anniversary. A pair of Zach’s ugly-ass flip-flips are still sitting half-hidden under the coffee table, where he last left them. Zach is too entwined with Chris. He’s not going anywhere._

_“Can you be a little less flippant?” Zach says, his irritable sigh a crackle in Chris’s ear. “I’m talking about ending a marriage here.”_

_“No, you’re talking crazy is what you’re doing. Come on, Zach. What about counseling?”_

_“I changed my mind about counseling. It’s not going to work.”_

_It’s Chris’s turn to sigh. He falls heavily into one of the chairs in the living room and shifts the phone to the other ear again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”_

_“It means the more I think about it, the more I think we were just kidding ourselves all along.”_

_Well_ that _isn’t a nice thing to say. Chris bristles, and his voice comes out challenging and angry, though probably a lot less angry than Zach wants him to be. “All along?”_

_“We’re just too different, Chris. It’s not fair of me to want to change you, and it’s not fair of you to want to change me. We’re just not compatible. We let feelings get in the way, and—”_

_“Whoa, whoa, slow the fuck down there, Spock.” Something ugly is rising up in the pit of Chris’s belly. It’s starting to sound like Zach is really asking him for a divorce. Over the phone. “Sure, we let feelings get in the way. Feelings called devotion and responsibility and honesty—”_

_“I don’t think those last two are really feelings.”_

_“—and you can’t just give up without even trying!”_

_“I did try, Chris! And I’m tired of trying. And I don’t think it’s supposed to be this hard.”_

_“Oh, fuck you. Love is hard. Marriage is hard._ Life _is fucking hard, Zach.”_

_“Look, I’m not asking you,” Zach says. “I want a divorce. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s what I want. Getting out of that house has been...it’s been eye-opening. I was suffocating there. And I’m done.”_

_Suffocating. It’s not the first time Zach has used the word, and by now it’s like a cruise missile guided straight for Chris’s most vulnerable places. This is the problem with fighting with Zach. There are no Geneva Conventions for their marriage, and even if there were, he’d probably ignore them. The goal is to win, right? At all costs. Take no prisoners._

_Chris swallows thickly around the lump in his throat. He can’t show emotion now, can’t show weakness. “I’m not going to beg you to stay, Zach, if that’s what you’re after.”_

_“I’m not after anything, Chris.” He sounds unbearably condescending. Chris hates him a little bit, right then. “I just want out.”_

_“Yeah, what the fuck else is new?” Chris gets to his feet again, but he doesn’t move, just squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. He has to swallow again to ensure his voice will be even. “Fine. What can I say, then? Fine. Whatever you want, Zach.”_

_Zach says thank you. He fucking thanks Chris, like he’s doing him a favor by letting him leave. And the truly fucked up thing? Maybe he is._

\----

A dusty calendar hangs over the defunct sink in the kitchen, and Vera has been marking off the days, insisting that keeping track of time will help them all feel more normal. This morning, a black X appeared over August 25th. It’s the 26th today, Chris’s birthday. He mentioned as much off-hand to Kyle while they were cleaning up after breakfast, and he assumed that would be the end of it—a small “Oh, hey, remember when things like birthdays were relevant?” and that’s it—but tonight at dinner Susan brandished a bottle of whiskey and declared him the birthday boy, and things went downhill from there.

To be fair, the appearance of alcohol has put everyone in higher spirits. Chris was worried they would all turn into sad whiskey-drunks, but there has been a lot of laughter and very little reminiscing. The downside is that no doldrums means no reason to cut the party short before anyone imbibes too much. Everyone passes the bottle back to Chris twice as often as they pass it around the circle, and soon Chris finds himself too busy listening to stories and laughing along to pay attention to how much he’s drinking. But why should he? If there is any time that getting drunk makes sense, it’s now. 

He keeps losing track of Zach, which is sign number one that he should probably cool it with the alcohol. Darkness seems to have descended on them all at once, and the orange light of the fire doesn’t reach quite far enough to illuminate the things Chris wishes it would illuminate. Handfuls of glittery sparks drift up from the flames, as if in slow motion, and every now and then he can see past them enough to catch a glimpse of Zach’s smile, but it’s always fleeting, like looking through unfocused binoculars, the image blurry and doubled. Chris looks down at the bottle in his hand and finds it empty.

“Who’s going to put the birthday boy to bed?” says a voice—probably Susan, though Chris is having a hard time saying that with certainty. By the time he rolls his head toward the sound, she isn’t talking anymore.

“I don’t need someone to put me to bed,” he declares, waving the bottle and then letting it slide out of his fingers to the ground. His vehemence doesn’t last long. A moment later, there are fingers on his arm, a shoulder sliding up under his to lever him to his feet, and it doesn’t occur to him to do anything other than stumble along, flapping a hand magnanimously in the direction of the cheers and birthday wishes that follow him into the dark. 

They are halfway back to the cabin before Chris realizes that the person tucked under his arm is Zach. The shock of it makes him stumble over his own feet, so they both list dangerously to the side and Zach curses in his ear, a warm gust of breath on the side of his face. 

“Jesus, you’re fucking heavy,” he mutters, shifting his arm around Chris’s waist and gripping him tighter. He feels so solid and warm, pressed close to Chris’s side like this. It’s the closest they’ve been in months where Chris actually feels like he can enjoy it, even through this alcohol-fuzzed lens. He curls his fingers into the fabric of Zach’s shirt and tries to focus as much as he can on walking straight, so they won’t stumble again and Zach will just keep holding him. 

When they reach the cabin, Zach kicks the door wide so he can maneuver them both inside, only knocking Chris’s shoulder a little bit on the door frame. 

“I miss electricity,” he sighs as he guides Chris through the dark toward the bed. Chris snorts in understanding. You don’t appreciate the littlest things until they’re gone. Like being able to come home drunk and slap clumsily at the wall until the lights come on, ensuring you won’t kill yourself on the long, lurching trek toward the bed. At least this particular walk isn’t a long one, but the bed at the end of it still isn’t worth the journey. When Zach lowers him ungracefully to the mattress, he curls onto his side and groans, wishing he had a mound of fluffy pillows and a quilt to pull over his head, so he could block out the way the room spins around him.

“You’re going to be so pissed at yourself in the morning, Chris,” Zach says from somewhere far about his head. He reaches out and paws at Zach’s denim-clad thigh until he manages to get a grip on it.

“Water?” he asks hopefully.

“Maybe if you let go of me for a second.” Zach’s fingers are gentle as they pry Chris’s hand away, but Chris still laments the loss of contact. He wants Zach to stay close, because even his drunk-brain knows that when all of this is over, it’ll be back to business as usual. Ten feet apart at all times. No more tender amusement in Zach’s voice or careful fingers brushing his. 

Zach’s footsteps retreat toward the back door, where they keep a jug full of fresh water. Chris closes his eyes and swallows down the gush of saliva in his mouth, willing his stomach to settle. This is the worst level of drunk—where he’s not far gone enough to puke unselfconsciously and pass out, but he’s pretty sure puking and passing out would be the best course of action. He swallows hard again, and when he opens his eyes, Zach is back, holding a plastic cup at his eye level. It takes him a couple tries to get his fingers around it.

“Chris, wait. Sit up.” Zach’s hand closes on his shoulder and tugs, dragging him upright. Water slops out of the glass and onto Chris’s sheets, but he barely notices. He takes two big gulps and is relieved when his stomach accepts the water graciously. He doesn’t want to ruin the temporary truce he and Zach seem to have right now by losing his dinner all over Zach’s shirt. 

“Thanks,” he says quietly, and takes another drink. He feels heavy and seasick, but Zach’s hand holds him steady. 

“Do you need a bucket or something?” Zach asks. It’s hard to focus on his face, which is swimming a little. Does he look as concerned as Chris imagines he looks?

“Nah, I’m good,” Chris mumbles. He downs the rest of the water.

“More?” Zach asks.

“Uhh.”

“I’ll get you more.” 

Chris sways after him when he gets up to go, but then he catches himself on the edge of the bed and sits there, pitched forward, staring at the dirty floor and trying to focus his slow and scattered thoughts. Skunk waddles his way into view, and Chris reaches down to clumsily scratch his head. It’s comforting to have those beady little eyes staring up at him, just like every other time he has stumbled home drunk in the past couple years. Except usually Zach was drunker than him, and Chris was the one fetching the water.

This time, when Zach hands off the cup, he doesn’t stay. He shuffles backward and sits on the edge of his bed, across from Chris, and Chris spends a moment staring at his feet before he drags his gaze up to his face. 

“I didn’t want to celebrate, you know,” he slurs, apropos of nothing. “I wasn’t…I didn’t tell them to...”

It seemed like the right thing to say, but Zach’s long-suffering sigh says otherwise. “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating your birthday.”

“Feels like there is.” If this really counts as celebrating, that is. Things felt a little jovial for a second back with all the others, but now Chris feels drained and nauseous and knows he’s going to be embarrassed in the morning. Not to mention sick. 

Zach snorts, then shakes his head. “You remember last year?”

Of course Chris does, but it’s not a happy memory. He and Zach were already on the rocks then, and there had been a spat over whether they should have a party or go to a nice restaurant, just the two of them. Chris was on the side of the restaurant. Zach wanted to throw him a party. In the end, there was a compromise—dinner out with a handful of close friends—and Chris did end up having a good time, but he still had to make sure to get plenty of digs in for weeks after that about how he couldn’t even have the birthday he wanted. _Zach the Control Freak strikes again._

“You’ve never liked people doing nice things for you,” Zach says without waiting for him to answer. “It’s okay to let people make much of you sometimes.”

“I don’t…that’s not why I…” Chris shakes his head. He isn’t sober enough to articulate himself, and even if he was, Zach has a tendency not to listen to him. “You have no idea.”

“No idea about what?”

“About anything! About me.” His stomach gives a particularly strong lurch, and he takes a few breaths through his nose to see if that will settle it. It doesn’t. “I just meant that I would never have wanted to celebrate at a time like this.”

“I think you could make a pretty good argument that surviving another year matters more now than it ever did.” Zach reaches down and scoops Skunk up onto the bed with him, places a loud kiss on his head. It’s painfully endearing. Or maybe just painful. Chris squeezes his eyes shut.

“I think I could make a pretty good argument that it doesn’t.”

When Zach doesn’t say anything for several seconds, Chris opens his eyes again to look at him. He is unreadable, his eyes shuttered, his mouth drawn into a thin line. Chris probably shouldn’t feel triumphant for having rendered him speechless, but he does. It’s strange, though. After everything, he would have thought Zach would be the nihilistic one. Maybe his near-death experience had some effect on him after all. He’s been doing a damn good job of hiding it, if that’s the case.

“Whatever, Chris,” Zach sighs at last. Chris watches as he toes off his shoes and nudges them under his bed, then sets Skunk down next to him on the mattress before standing up again. “You should sleep.”

Zach takes the cup out of his hands and goes to fill it up a third time, then sets it on the floor next to Chris’s bed. This is the part where Chris should start undressing and wriggle under the covers, but his fuzzy brain is stuck in a negative feedback loop now. 

“Why can’t you ever just listen to me?” he asks, looking up at Zach with unfocused eyes. “Why don’t you believe me when I talk to you?”

“Chris, you’re drunk.” Zach turns away like he thinks he can forcibly end the conversation that way. The cabin isn’t big enough for him to get away though. He walks over to get himself some water, and Chris follows him with his gaze.

“Yeah, just drunk enough to have this conversation. I’m tired of you thinking you know me better than me.”

Somehow, Chris can tell Zach is rolling his eyes, even though he isn’t facing him. “Oh, right, how dare I presume to know the man I was married to.”

 _Was_ married to. Chris’s stomach rolls. He closes his eyes and puts a hand to his forehead to confirm that it’s the room that’s spinning and not his head. “That’s your fucking problem, Zach. You _presume_ everything.”

Zach turns back toward him, and Chris expects him to look angry, but he doesn’t. He just looks tired. With a drawn-out sigh, he sets his cup down and walks back over to Chris, kneeling down in front of him. “We’re not having this conversation right now. You need to sleep it off.”

Chris watches as Zach works on the laces of his boots, then gently tugs them off his feet. Energy drains out of him all at once and takes his anger with it. Seeing Zach’s bowed head, his quiet concern, is surreal and comforting. Chris wants to brush the hair out of his eyes and sift the strands between his fingers like he used to. He bets it’s so soft now. It hasn’t seen any product in weeks. It probably would feel like heaven to bury his hands in it, use that grip to pull Zach up and into a kiss.

He draws a sharp breath and falls back on his elbows on the mattress, in a rush to put a little more distance between himself and Zach, who is straightening up.

“Do you need help getting the rest of your clothes off?” Zach asks. Chris shakes his head a little too quickly—anything to keep Zach’s fingers off his skin right now. Zach shrugs and turns away, and Chris takes the opportunity to push off his jeans as quickly as his fumbling fingers will allow him to, then wriggle his way under the thin quilt. He turns his face to the wall and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the way the world has started to tilt again, his stomach sloshing along with it.

The sounds of Zach undressing and getting ready for bed settle him a little. Footsteps creak to and fro across the plank floor as Zach goes to put his clothes away and let Skunk out the back door to do his business. Eventually the lantern goes out, the light dimming behind Chris’s eyelids, and Zach’s bed whines as he climbs into it. Chris holds his breath for a moment, so he can hear Zach’s. It’s strong and even now, not rattly and labored. Whatever else he can say about the state of things, at least he can say Zach is okay.

In the quiet—the fake, forced quiet of two people trying to sleep—Chris’s mind struggles under the weight of his drunkenness, resisting the pull toward unconsciousness. It’s going to be a fitful sleep, and he doesn’t want it. He wants to fix some details in his mind first. Zach’s eyes in the firelight. Zach’s fingers on his shoulder. 

“Happy Birthday, Chris.” Zach’s voice is low, like he doesn’t intend for Chris to hear it. 

Chris squeezes his eyes shut tighter and replays the sound of it over and over, until it fades away into irritating silence.


	3. Chapter 3

Zach is sitting up in bed with a book on his lap when Chris walks in. A candle burns on the skinny table at the foot of his bed, and the lantern hanging from the ceiling is lit, but it isn’t enough light to read by. The sun has started to set outside, and not much light comes into the cabin even in the middle of the day. Chris wants to scold, but he bites his tongue. He’s trying to be better. It’s anyone’s guess whether Zach notices or not. 

“The shower’s done,” he says as he unhooks his tool belt and drops it on the floor at the foot of his bed. A little puff of sawdust swirls into the air and then settles again. Chris brushes more of the stuff off of his hands, then swipes his hands on his pants. He could use a shower himself. His shirt is sticking to his back, and he smells like a woodshop. Not that he ever smells like Mr. Armani Code anymore. At least half of his daydreams involve a real, hot shower.

“Mmm,” Zach says absently, without looking up from his book. 

“You’re welcome,” Chris mutters. He’s doing better with the over-protectiveness, but the bitterness probably isn’t going anywhere any time soon, especially not with Zach determined to ignore him as much as possible. 

The snarky comment gets Zach’s attention, though. He looks up and meets Chris’s eyes, frowning. “Sorry, what shower?”

“The one I built on the side of our cabin.” Chris wonders if Zach really didn’t notice the wooden stall that’s been a work in progress for the past few days or if he’s just being purposefully obtuse. “Susan found me an extra camp shower. I figured it’d be nice to have one close by, so you wouldn’t have to bathe in the river every night.”

Zach sighs, puts his book down, pinches the bridge of his nose. Chris tenses. He wasn’t really expecting Zach to fall on his face in gratitude over the luxury of a private, albeit primitive, shower, but he had been hoping for at least a hint of a smile. Or even a flippant “thanks”. Instead, Zach looks like he just realized Chris made a big mess that he has to clean up. Chris sits down hard on the edge of his bed and waits for the scolding. 

“I don’t _have_ to bathe in the river every night,” Zach says, speaking slowly, like he doesn’t expect Chris to be able to follow him. “I want to. And even if I didn’t, I could walk up to the shower building like everyone else. But those camp showers don’t last long enough. I never feel clean afterward. I don’t like them.”

“I just thought it would be nice.” Chris is trying to keep his voice even, but he knows he sounds defensive. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“And you didn’t think to ask me if it was something I wanted first?”

That would have been the smart thing to do, but Chris knows that he wasn’t looking to be smart this time. Maybe wasn’t even looking to be nice, as much as he keeps telling himself otherwise. The slapdash shower stall is one more in a long line of attempts to gain some ground in this game of tug-o-war they are playing. And here they are, still at a standoff. If anything, Zach is the one who eked a few more inches. As usual.

“You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to,” Chris says, as if Zach needs his permission. “I’ll use it myself. I just thought it would feel more like home to have something resembling our own bathroom.”

Zach catches his bottom lip between his teeth and narrows his eyes at Chris, stares him down for a long moment. Then, he turns away again, pulling his feet up onto the bed and picking his book back up. Chris recognizes the signs. Zach is readying himself to get the last word in the conversation. Drop a bomb and then shut Chris out before he has the chance to retort. He braces for it.

“You’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to make this place home, Chris,” he says. “It is what it is. No amount of wood and nails is going to change it.”

The words give him pause and make him wonder for a moment if Zach is struggling more than he’s letting on. For the most part, Zach has seemed unperturbed by reality, while Chris is constantly scraping and clutching for scraps of comfort, anything to make this life feel normal. Maybe Chris has it all wrong though. Maybe Zach isn’t coping. But if he isn’t, why can’t he talk to him about it, instead of pushing him away? They should be in this together. They shouldn’t have to deal with this alone. 

Zach has obviously decided he has no more to say on the matter though. He has shoved his nose back in his book, so the only option Chris can see is passive aggression. He sighs, pushing his dirty fingers through his dirty hair in what’s more of a melodramatic display than actual annoyance. He gets to his feet and goes back to the front door, bangs it open and lets it bang shut again behind him. He’ll use the shower himself and sing loudly while he’s doing it, so Zach can hear him through the wall, being obnoxiously happy and pretending this place is home. 

\---

_”What did you do, man?”_

_Chris knows exactly why Joe is asking the question, but he plays dumb anyway. “What does that mean?”_

_“It means why’s Zach asking me if he can move in with me for a while?”_

_Chris tells his racing heart to calm down. Everything is okay. This is a good development. Because if anyone is going to get Zach to see reason and come home, it’s Joe._

_“He walked out a little while back,” Chris sighs into the phone. “A couple weeks. I think he’s trying to prove some kind of point.”_

_“What kind of point?”_

_Zach would probably want him to tell Joe it’s none of his business, but if he’s being honest, Chris is a little tired of holding this all in. He needs someone in his camp. And Joe is the only other person on the planet who can sympathize with how hard it is to live with Zach sometimes. Or at least the only other person who can sympathize and is still around to whine about it._

_“That I’m a wet blanket.” Fuck, it sounds even dumber when he says it out loud. Is this really what this fight boils down to? “And controlling, I guess, which, don’t believe him if he tells you that shit, Joe. I am like the least controlling pers—”_

_“Hey, I didn’t ask you to unload on me, man,” Joe cuts in. “I just want to know you guys are going to be okay. And that I don’t have to kick your ass for breaking his heart.”_

_“Jesus, what is this, high school?” Chris scrubs a hand across his face and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. This is far more drama that he is equipped to handle as a person. “I didn’t break his heart. His heart is made out of fucking titanium.”_

_Joe snorts. “Yeah, okay, tell me you aren’t actually that big an idiot.”_

_“What? It’s the truth. Trust me, I begged him not to go, and he was like the tinman. Just rolled right on by me out the door. I did not break his heart. If anything…”_

_But Chris can’t finish that sentence. It’s bad form to shit-talk a man to his brother, and besides that, Chris isn’t sure he wants to examine how he’s really feeling about Zach leaving. He is still operating under the assumption that he’ll come to his senses and come home soon. So priority number one in this conversation with Joe should be to get him on his side, so he has an ally in this fight._

_Which is why he lied. He didn’t beg Zach not to go. He didn’t ask him to stay at all._

_“If anything what?” Joe says, his tone wheedling._

_“Nothing. I just mean that I’m not the one in the wrong here.”_

_“Pine,” Joe sighs. It’s amazing how similar his sighs sound to Katie’s sometimes. There must be a standard big-sibling sigh that all of them are endowed with the moment their kid brother or sister comes into the world. “It doesn’t matter who’s in the wrong, you dipshit. It’s a relationship. If it gets broke, you fix it.”_

_“Yeah, well,” Chris says lamely. “He’s impervious.”_

_He has_ seen _Zach in the last couple weeks, sure. Skunk is still at the house, because Zach has been living in a hotel, and Zach has stopped by a few times to visit the dog, and to wash his clothes, to raid fresh vegetables out of the fridge. But he always rebuffs Chris’s attempts to talk, and he hasn’t stayed for long. It’s hard to fix anything when he can’t find an opening._

_The phone is always an option, but every time he goes to call Zach, his fingers freeze up on him. If he doesn’t reach out, he can’t get rejected. He knows he’s being a coward, but Zach will come to his senses on his own, eventually._

_“Just don’t get complacent,” Joe says, as if reading his mind. “I’ll see what I can get out of him, but you can’t just assume he’s going to come running back. He’s more fragile than you think.”_

_Chris bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from immediately contradicting Joe on that front. Joe is blinded by big brother logic. He’ll always see Zach as the little kid he had to protect from skinned knees and bullies. Grown-Up Zach doesn’t need protecting. Sometimes Grown-Up Zach_ is _the bully._

_But damn it to hell, Chris loves him. And not in the temporary way most people mean when they use that word. This love isn’t going away—ever—and he has to believe Zach feels the same way._

_“I’m not going to give up on him, Joe,” Chris says._

_“Good. See that you don’t. Because I’m just looking for a reason to beat you up, Pine.”_

_Chris chuckles, and Joe chuckles, and they end the call amicably. But after his phone is tucked back in his pocket, he can’t help but wonder why_ he _is the one who can never give up, who always has to keep chasing. It would be nice if it was the other way around for once._

\----

They are lucky it hasn’t started getting cold yet. September is passing away quickly, but the days are still warm and sunny, and the nights are mild. Living in Southern California, it was always easy to take seasons for granted. There was never a sense of impending doom, no fear of winter blizzards or summer heat waves. Now, they are all like little animals who crawl out of their burrows in the morning and sniff the air for signs of danger. Is there any hint of frost in the air? Have the leaves started to change? Winter means fresh food will be scarcer and it will be harder to stay warm at night. Chris has never been a fan of cold weather anyway, but now he is particularly glad that summer seems to be dragging its heels on the way out the door.

The garden has been giving them an okay haul, but not as much as Chris wishes. They are lucky they have a relatively small group, because the little patch of land wouldn’t sustain many more. But while it gives them enough to have something fresh with each meal, they aren’t managing to save as much for canning as anyone would like. Not enough that they can pass the winter without anxiety. Chris has been trying not to think about it. 

Today is going to be a day of extra luxuries though. Chris gave Vera some rhubarb and a pint of strawberries—the last of the season, the few anemic berries that were still clinging to the stalks—and they will have pie with dinner tonight. Even though he had lunch an hour ago, his stomach is already rumbling at the thought. They have to be careful using their small stockpile of flour and sugar, because those aren’t renewable resources anymore, but it’ll be worth it to have this one summer pie. 

It’s probably the best mood he’s been in since before he packed Zach into the car and brought him here, so it figures that something would come along and ruin it. He is walking back to the cabin, enjoying the scenery for once, humming under his breath, when he rounds the bend and stops in his tracks.

Zach is standing in the gaping doorway of the cabin, one shoulder leaned casually against the jamb, a smile on his face. And standing in front of him, close to him, _too_ close to him, is Tristan. Male model Tristan. Wavy-haired, hazel-eyed Tristan, with his pretty dimples and his skinny jeans that look like they came out of the little girls’ department. How does he get any real work done in those things? He is laughing at something Zach is saying, then reaching out and touching his fingers to the back of Zach’s forearm. If they were standing in the middle of a nightclub, that’d be the universal sign for “I’m down to fuck.” Chris has a feeling that the fact that they’re standing in the middle of the woods doesn’t change much.

It figures. Zach is a fucking magnet. When he’s smiling like that, turning his attention on you like that, it’s like no other feeling in the world. Chris can sympathize with Tristan—he really can. It’s the end of the world, and how are you not going to want to fuck the scaldingly hot former movie star that fate landed in the same vicinity as you? 

But Zach, though. Zach he can blame. 

He finds himself walking again, toward the cabin, before he even makes a conscious decision to do so. Zach must hear his footsteps crunching in the dirt, because he looks up, and his expression flickers for just a moment, quick enough that Chris could have missed it if he wasn’t looking for it. Then, his smile is back in full force, and his eyes go back to Tristan, like Chris doesn’t even rate an actual acknowledgment right now.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Chris says as he approaches them, amazing himself with the false brightness he manages to inject into his voice. 

Tristan whirls around like he heard a gunshot, and that is incredibly satisfying. He doesn’t seem quite able to meet Chris’s eyes, which is even better.

“No, of course—” he starts to say, but Zach cuts him off.

“Only a conversation, Chris.”

Chris tries to grin, but he can’t tell if he’s succeeding. It feels foreign, contorting his mouth like that. “Well, sorry, I just came back to get cleaned up before dinner.”

“Be my guest.” Zach turns a little, like his body is the door and he’s giving Chris permission to go inside _his own_ cabin. Chris bumps shoulders with him on purpose as he passes by.

“I should probably…go…” he hears Tristan say. Whatever Zach’s reply is, it’s murmured low enough that Chris can’t make it out. It isn’t until Zach turns around and the door bangs shut behind him that he realizes he has just been standing there staring, not even attempting to gather his things together for his shower. 

“Can I help you?” Zach asks with a sneer. Chris’s eyes are still adjusting to the relative darkness inside the cabin, but he can see the flash of white that comes with Zach baring his teeth, a warning not to start shit now. But too bad. Chris is going to start some shit.

“What the fuck was that, Zach?” he snarls.

“Fucking…really? Are you really going—”

“Yeah, I am, really.” Except now that he’s started, he’s not sure where he’s going with it. He dives right in anyway. “Is there something going on with you and that kid?”

“Oh my God.” Zach puts his fingertips to his temples. “It’s like deja vu. I can’t believe, after _everything_ we are still having the same conversation over and over again.”

“And that’s somehow my fault?” Chris asks. “You’re the one who—”

“The one who has the audacity to talk to other people? Oh yes, truly I am a monster.”

“You think I don’t know the difference between talking and flirting when I see it?”

“No, I actually don’t think you do. But you know what? It doesn’t matter.” Zach lets his hands fall back to his sides and takes a couple steps forward. Now that Chris’s eyes are adjusting to the dim light, he can see Zach’s expression better, and he doesn’t like what he sees. Zach always telegraphs his next move before he makes it, and Chris knows this one is going to be a doozy. He almost covers his head.

Instead, he summons as much courage as he can muster and asks, “Why not?”

“Because you have no claim on me, Chris.”

It figures that when Chris needs his anger the most—to protect him from feeling the impact of those words—it’s nowhere to be found. Though he was sure he wasn’t deluding himself into thinking they could salvage this relationship, or that Zach was even _interested_ in salvaging this relationship, it still hurts to have the door slammed in his face like this. It hurts, and he can’t muster a good reason to be indignant about that hurt. He knew when he walked up to the cabin that he didn’t have a right to tell Zach who he could and couldn’t flirt with. Zach moved out, and they were going to get divorced, and they were going to probably never see each other again—or at least not until some stupid Star Trek reunion in twenty years when the wounds weren’t so fresh. Those are the facts. And yet Chris was apparently still holding onto a little bit of hope.

Stupid, _stupid_. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Chris turns away. He walks to the end of his bed and rifles through his clothes until he finds a clean shirt and underwear. 

“You’re not going to say anything?” Zach asks. His voice isn’t as confrontational as Chris would expect. There is a confusing tint of tentativeness to it that wasn’t there a moment ago.

“What is there for me to say?” Chris says as he straightens up and turns around again, clutching his clothes in a wad in his fist. “You just told me how it is, didn’t you?”

Zach’s jaw clenches. “Well, it’s pretty obvious you don’t agree. I want us to be on the same page, so we don’t keep having this fight.”

That seems a particularly cruel blow, that the only good reason for them to be on the same page is to keep from fighting. Wasn’t being on the same page once an end in itself? Once, they had built a whole world just for the two of them to live in, stood at an altar and declared to the world that they would stay there together. Now it’s gone.

“Message received, Zach,” Chris says, looking past Zach’s face to the door. “I’m not an idiot. It was just…I had a knee-jerk reaction is all. You can fuck whoever you want.”

“I wasn’t going to fuck—”

Chris lifts a hand, cutting him off. “Whatever. Do or don’t. None of my business. I have no claim on you, right?”

He heads for the door, and Zach steps aside to let him pass, giving him a wide enough berth that Chris can’t aggressively knock shoulders with him again. That’s a shame. At least it was some bit of contact.

When he reaches for the door handle, he hesitates a moment, expecting Zach to want the last word. But Zach stays quiet. It’s almost unsettling. Like a moment of silence for their relationship.

It breaks with a shriek of old hinges. Chris stomps down the front steps, wishing he had somewhere to go.

\----

_Zach and his stupid fucking flare for the dramatic. He’s ripping clothes out of the closet without even paying attention to what he’s grabbing—Chris can see a sweater and a necktie and a pair of yoga pants clutched in his arms as he stalks by him to the overnight bag on the bed. Not a single one of those pieces of clothing is going to be much use to him, but it’d surely ruin his temper tantrum if he paused to actually pick out some sensible things._

 _“Zach,” Chris says. He’s exasperated, bordering on amused, which is just throwing gas on the fire that is Zach’s anger. It’s ridiculous though, this snit Zach is in. What kind of person literally packs their things and walks out in the middle of a fight, while they’re still mad? Zach has seen too many movies. He’s been in too many movies. He seems to think his_ life _is a movie, but when the credits roll on this one, they won’t get to step blinking into the sunshine and go on as normal._

_“Don’t ‘Zach’ me,” Zach says, providing theatrical dialogue for his theatrical exit. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of you not trusting me. I’m not going to do it anymore.”_

_Chris rolls his eyes. Bad move. Zach looks at him at just the wrong moment and stops in his tracks, his expression darkening. Chris has to scramble to damage-control. “Look, I said I was sorry. Let’s just talk about it, okay? You don’t need to fucking pack your ba—”_

_“Oh, yeah, because talking has always worked so well in the past.” Zach turns around and heads for the bathroom this time, and Chris can hear him banging around in the cabinets. When he reemerges, it’s with an armful of bottles. “I’ll stay at a hotel tonight.”_

_“And tomorrow?” Chris asks with a sigh._

_“And tomorrow I’ll find a more permanent solution.”_

_Chris swallows his reflexive alarm. This is just another one of Zach’s moods, and it’ll blow over like all the others. Tomorrow morning he’ll be back with his tail between his legs, slide into bed with Chris and put his arms around him and apologize for blowing up. Sure, things have been bad lately, but couples have fights. They’ll get past it._

_“Whatever, Zach,” Chris says, flapping a hand at him. “You do what you need to do.”_

_“I will,” Zach snaps. He is stuffing things willy-nilly into his bag, which is just asking for one of those bottles to explode all over his clothes, but Chris bites his tongue. Nit-picking right now isn’t a good idea._

_Zach finishes his haphazard packing and zips the bag shut, pausing a couple times to stuff in shirt sleeves that hang over the edge. Chris steps out of the way when he heads for the door, but he immediately falls in step behind him, following him through the house and into the front hall. While he isn’t expecting any kind of goodbye, and he isn’t expecting Zach to have a change of heart, he is just enough of a masochist that he needs to actually see him walk out the door. And maybe if he has that image in his mind, he can keep feeling angry, avoid feeling scared._

_“Don’t try to call me, okay?” Zach says as he reaches for the doorknob, without even turning around to look at Chris. “I just need some space.”_

_Space. Zach always needs space. Always more and more and more space. He doesn’t seem to realize that there is a maximum amount of space two people can have between them and still have a functional relationship._

_“Take all the space you need,” Chris says. If Zach notices the sarcasm, he doesn’t acknowledge it._

_The door opens, then closes with Zach on the other side of it. No parting look, no dismissive wave, no nothing. Not even the slightest indication that Zach is regretful, that he’s worried this won’t work out._ Does _he worry, Chris wonders? Does he even_ care _?_

_Either way, Chris isn’t worried. Zach will be back. Zach always comes back._

\----

Chris doesn’t notice the rumbling thunder in the distance until he slides the piece of string he uses as a bookmark into place. He’s been reading an old Hardy Boys novel he pilfered from the dusty bookcase in the lodge, and it’s not exactly enthralling stuff, but apparently it sucked him in enough to make him oblivious to the impending storm. Now, his heart speeds up. He turns his face toward the front door and notes the humidity in the air for the first time. The thunder sounds like it’s far away—like bombs dropping on a distant city—but Chris knows it will get closer in time, until it’s right on top of them, rattling the walls.

He puts the book on the milk crate next to his bed and gets up. Zach is in bed, turned away from him. It’s impossible to tell if he’s asleep yet or not, and Chris doesn’t dare whisper a question to find out. He sheds his jeans and tosses them carelessly toward the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, turns off the lantern, then climbs back under his quilt and pulls it up to his chin. It’s still warm inside the cabin, but the covers are more of a comfort thing than anything else. Chris has more or less gotten used to sleeping on the thin vinyl mattress and lifeless pillow, but he compensates by turning into a human burrito, swaddling himself like a baby. Hopefully that will keep him calm tonight, with the promise of a thunderstorm in the air.

Chris dozes a little bit—he doesn’t know how long—before a whipcrack jolts him awake. He breathes slowly through his nose and stares up at the ceiling, which is all shadows and abstract shapes in the dark. The rain is coming down now, but it is incongruously light, like a dance of tiny feet across the wooden roof. A flash of lightning illuminates the room for a moment. Another crack of thunder comes twenty seconds later—Chris knows because he counted. He twitches, clutches his blanket a little tighter.

“Shit,” he says under his breath. Twenty seconds—that’s still pretty far away. But the thunder already is so loud.

Zach’s bed creaks, and Chris looks over, but he can’t make him out. He is nothing more than a black lump on the bed. No amount of blinking and squinting will tell Chris whether he’s facing him or not, whether he’s awake or not. He can see Skunk is awake though, his eyes glinting at Chris from the foot of Zach’s bed. 

And then Zach speaks. “Chris?”

“Hmm?” Chris tries to sound nonchalant, because while he’s glad Zach is up, he doesn’t want to broadcast his anxiety. 

“You alright over there?”

“Yeah,” Chris rasps. “Just…having trouble sleeping.”

“The storm?” 

As if on cue, the room blinks momentarily white again. Chris turns his head in time to see that Zach is laying on his side, facing him across the gap between their beds. He rolls onto his side too, maneuvering inside his blanket cocoon, but it’s too late. The room is dark again, and he can’t look to Zach’s face for comfort.

“Yeah,” he whispers, then clears his throat. “It’s just…I don’t know. The thunder woke me up.”

Zach lets out a little snort. “You’re scared.”

“I’m not—” But he’s cut off by another peal of thunder, even closer this time. The wind is picking up too, and the rain has turned into a steady rush of sound. Chris rubs at the scruff on his chin and squeezes his eyes shut, then lets out a slow breath. It’s probably not worth arguing. “Give me a break, man. I was born and raised in LA. Do you even remember the last time we had a thunderstorm?”

It takes a moment for Zach to answer him. Distant rumbles fill the silence. “I do,” he says at last. “It was a week after we got married.”

Chris recalls in instantly, with vivid clarity. They had just returned from their honeymoon, and it was pouring when they slid into a cab outside the airport. The traffic had been horrendous, because Southern Californians don’t know how to drive in the rain, but Chris barely noticed how long it took them to get home. He and Zach made out in the back seat for a while, then snuggled together and listened to the sound of raindrops on the windows while they talked about the things they needed to do when they got home. Chris had to call his agent. Zach had to pick up the dogs from Joe’s place. Both of those things ended up getting put off when they stumbled through the front door, drenched and giggling, and immediately made for the bedroom, stripping their wet clothes off on the way. 

“That one wasn’t scary,” Chris says quietly. He doesn’t think he even heard the thunder then. Not over the sounds of Zach’s filthy voice in his ear. “And we were in a real house. This flimsy fucking cabin could blow right-the-fuck over.”

“This cabin has survived plenty of storms, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, and this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Zach doesn’t seem to have an answer to that, although for all Chris knows, he’s rolling his eyes at him in the dark. The wind whistles through the gaps around the windows and under the doors, and the rain crescendos steadily, until it’s beating against the roof so hard it sounds like hail. Chris opens his eyes again and squints through the dark, another failed attempt to find Zach’s face. The darkness out here in the woods is real darkness. There is no ambient light, and tonight, not even any moonlight. 

“I’ve been thinking of going back to the house,” Zach says. 

At first, Chris doesn’t know what he means. He has been concentrating too hard on the storm and on keeping himself calm to follow Zach’s conversational leaps. When he does figure it out, he jerks upright, searching around on the milk crate next to his bed for the matches.

“Zach, what—” His fingers are fumbling too much for him to find the strike strip in the dark. He breaks the match in half trying to do it. Then, all of a sudden, Zach is right there, taking the matchbook out of his hands and then lighting the candle beside the bed on the first try. Soft orange light fills the room, flickering across Zach’s face. Chris looks up at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, you’re thinking of going back to the house?”

“I don’t mean permanently,” Zach says. He backs off again, sitting down on the edge of his bed. His eyes are so shadowed that Chris can’t read them. “Just to…I don’t know. I need to see it. I need to see the city. Manny said he’s going to make a trip in a week or so to try to get enough supplies to get us through the winter. Janine is going with him. I thought…I thought maybe I’d go to.”

“They’re not just going into San Bernardino? Or Riverside? Zach, that’s an hour drive, at least. It’s too dangerous.”

Zach goes quiet for long enough that Chris knows he’s caught him in a lie. It’s not at all surprising when Zach opens his mouth and says, “They’re just going to Riverside. I figured I’d go that far with them and then go the rest of the way on my own.”

“No,” Chris says.

“Chris—”

“ _No_. You have no idea what it’s going to be like out there, Zach. You can’t go alone.”

“Chris.” 

Chris flinches. He knows already that this is just one more argument that Zach is going to win, and that’s terrifying. “I’ll go with you.”

“No you won’t,” Zach snaps. “Look, you already…you got to process all this, okay? You got to make the decision to take us away from our home and bring us up here into the mountains to live with strangers. I didn’t get a say. And I didn’t get to say goodbye. It’s hard for me to even…sometimes I forget that everyone else is gone, okay? I need to…I have to go. Alone. Or at least without you.”

Chris leans forward and grips his knees, trying to keep his breathing slow. He has no clue what Zach will encounter in the city. Roving bands of marauders? People squatting in their house? People with weapons, with guns, willing to strip whatever they can from whoever they can? He can’t go alone. He just can’t. “Take Kyle with you,” he pleads. “Hell, take Naomi. Take _Tristan_. I don’t give a fuck. You just…it’s not safe, Zach. This isn’t me being overprotective. This is me being practical. It’s not _safe_.

This time, the thunder comes right on the heels of the flash of lightning, and it’s loud enough to shake the walls. Chris is shaking too now, his shoulders quivering as violently as if he were freezing. But he’s not cold. He’s scared. More scared than he’s ever been. More scared than when he thought Zach was dying. Because this is his rude awakening—the moment he realizes that getting Zach to safety doesn’t mean he saved him. 

“I’ll think about it,” Zach says. He looks stubborn, though. Too stubborn. 

“Okay,” Chris says carefully. This isn’t a good time to push too hard. He has a week to convince him, or to get Susan and Manny to lean on him, insist he not needlessly endanger himself. Maybe if it comes from someone other than Chris he’ll listen.

Zach stares hard at him for a moment, like he’s waiting for the rest of the lecture. Lightning strobes across his face again and again, playing a losing game with the shadows that always come rushing right back. The wind and the thunder are a lot less troubling now. Chris has more important things to worry about. If the cabin blows off its foundation, or a tree falls down and crushes them, maybe that would be a small mercy.

“Okay,” Chris says again, trying to reinforce his unwillingness to argue about it anymore. “That’s all I can ask. Obviously I can’t tell you what to do.”

It takes a lot of effort not to inject sarcasm into the last part of that. But he manages, and Zach looks satisfied. Or as satisfied as he ever manages to look anyway.

“Try to get some sleep, Chris,” he says with a sigh.

It’s not going to happen. Chris knows it’s not going to happen. Between the storm outside and the new storm brewing inside his head, sleep won’t come easy. Still, he leans over and blows out the candle, then stretches back out on his side, pulling his quilt back around him. The sounds of Zach shifting around, getting comfortable again, are barely audible underneath the wind and the rain, but Chris strains to hear them anyway, needing that tangible reminder that Zach is nearby.

On a whim, he asks, “Will you talk to me for a little while?”

He doesn’t have the right to ask this of Zach anymore, but his voice is still the most soothing sound in the world, and maybe if Chris can focus on it, he’ll be able to block out the storm and slip off to sleep. He fully expects Zach to tell him to fuck off, and even braces for it, but after a moment’s silence, Zach says, “Okay.”

He launches into a story about the goats playing on the hay bales, and he drags it out, giving them names and personalities and making Chris smile to himself. Zach would have been a good father, he thinks, with a little pang of sadness. He would tell a killer bedtime story. But that’s not a good thought to be having right now, so Chris forces it away. He focuses instead on the familiarity of Zach’s voice and the steady pounding of the rain, until sleep gets its claws in him and drags him under.


	4. Chapter 4

The trees press too close to the road for Chris’s liking. The road is too bumpy, probably washed out a little from the rain the other night. He rests against the window, but he keeps getting jostled, his head rolling and bouncing against the glass. He should sit up straight. He doesn’t have the energy to.

“Dude, you’re depressing,” Manny says, reaching across and slapping the outside of his thigh. “Buck up.”

With a sigh, Chris sits up and turns to look through the back window of the truck, making sure the little red Civic holding Zach and Janine is still behind them. It is. It bumps so violently over the ruts that Chris fears it might flip over, but at least it’s still there.

“They’ll be fine, Pine.” Manny nudges Chris’s shoulder with his fist. He’s a tactile guy. Chris can’t tell if that’s a mannerism that developed after the apocalypse—a need to confirm the tangibility of other people—or if it’s something he’s always had. The same goes for Kyle’s taciturnity and Susan’s need to control everything. Although Chris can sympathize with the latter.

Case in point: how worked up he is about Zach going anywhere without him. 

“You don’t know that,” he says, a little petulantly, as he faces forward again and sinks down a little in his seat. “You don’t know what it’s like in the city.”

“I know it’s most likely pretty empty,” Manny says. “I know that it’s been a short enough time since things fell apart that people probably haven’t gone feral yet. And that resources aren’t scarce enough yet to be fighting over.”

“Those are some mighty rosy glasses you’ve got there, my friend.”

Manny is probably right, though. Chris is self-aware about his worrying, and he knows things are usually ten times less horrible than he expects them to be, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to change the way he thinks. At least this way he’s always prepared for the worst. 

“I’m just saying, buddy. You need to loosen up that leash before Zach turns around and chokes you with it.”

Chris snorts. “Too late, man.”

Zach was livid when he found out that Chris horned in on this trip, which is the reason he is riding back there with Janine while Chris is up here in the truck with Manny. Zach and Janine aren’t even going to stop at Riverside. They are going to follow as far as the turnoff to LA, then head off on their own, into the unknown. At least Chris managed to get Zach not to go alone, but that seems less of a comfort now than it did a couple days ago. Janine has a sidearm while Chris and Manny have absolutely zilch, but Chris is still more worried about Zach than himself.

Eventually they join up to the highway again, and while Chris is glad for the smoother ride, he looks in the rearview mirror twice as often. The turnoff for LA comes far too soon, and then the little red car is drifting away from them. Chris watches it until it disappears and he is forced to turn his eyes forward again and watch the eerily empty highway unspool before them. 

It doesn’t look like the apocalyptic hellscape he would have expected—there are no beaten-up cars lining the sides of the roads, no dead bodies in the streets—but this is almost worse. His imagination fills in the gaps, reminding him of all the reasons why the road is deserted, as well as the reasons why it _might_ be deserted. Maybe everyone who is still well enough to be driving around is sticking close to LA, and Zach is headed into a trap, a pit roiling with the dregs of a desperate humanity. Maybe there are people hiding in the trees, waiting to jump out and ambush the errant passerby, force them off the road, and steal their belongings. Chris finds himself staring into the dark spaces between tree trunks, until the trees thin out and then disappear entirely, swapped out for scrub. Even when the pristine buildings of Riverside rise up ahead of them, Chris doesn’t feel better. 

He really wishes he could text Zach. But Zach probably wouldn’t answer even if that was an option.

“So, here’s the plan,” Manny says, jerking Chris out of his brooding. “We need gas, we need non-perishable food, and we need anything that would be useful around the farm—ropes, tarp, stuff like that. We aren’t going to spend too much time looking in random houses, because that’s dangerous, but we can hit some of the major stores, which hopefully haven’t been looted to hell yet.”

“Have you been down here before?” Chris asks, realizing he doesn’t know exactly how blind they are flying here.

“Just once,” Manny says. “Usually I keep my scavenging runs close by, to other campgrounds and vacation homes in the area, which have mostly still been deserted. But with winter coming on, we need to be a little more…aggressive.”

Chris nods and goes back to looking out the window, peering at the buildings they pass by, looking for any signs of danger. There are no people around, but he wouldn’t expect there to be. Some shop windows are boarded up, like the owners expect to return to them eventually. Some are smashed in, ragged shards of glass framing the edges like fangs in forbidding mouths. For the most part, though, Chris is struck once again by how normal things look overall. Some naive part of him expected it to be like a movie set—all crumbling buildings and graffiti and corpses piled in alleys. But he reminds himself that it has only been three months since he left LA with Zach, even though it feels like his old life is decades behind him. For all he knows, some people are moving on with business as usual out here. Maybe the remaining residents of Riverside are clinging to denial, living their lives as best they can with the diminished population and lack of electricity and running water. Maybe Joe Schmoe still opens his barber shop and someone stands guard over the local grocery store.

Or maybe he’s just trying to make himself believe that Zach is facing a similar sight right now in the city—something unintimidating, if a little quiet.

“You’ve got to quit worrying about Quinto, dude,” Manny says. “I need your mind sharp.”

Chris flushes with embarrassment at how transparent he is. “Yeah. Sorry. My mind’s right here, promise.”

They pull into the lot of the first gas station they come to. A couple of the pumps are already ripped apart, and one of the windows has been shattered and then covered over with thick paper. Manny stops the truck in front of one of the dismantled pumps and turns to look at Chris. “I’m going to see if there’s any gas left here. You want to check inside for anything we can use? No junk. And nothing perishable, remember. Stuff like flour and sugar would be a priority, but I don’t know if they have anything like that here.”

Chris nods, his hand finding the door handle. He can feel himself slipping easily into taking-direction mode, which is where he’s most comfortable. As long as Manny is telling him exactly what he needs to do, he can play his role and shut off his brain, just like he does when he’s in front of a camera. 

“If you see anyone, holler, okay? Don’t try to be a hero, pretty boy.”

“Fuck you,” Chris says, grinning. He turns around to grab an empty bag from the back seat, and they both exit the car.

It’s a warm day, the sky a bright and clear blue above them. It would be a perfect day to go down to the beach, or to go on a run through the hills, if Chris were back home. But he’s not; he’s here, about to walk into a deserted gas station. He can hear Manny getting one of the gas cans out of the bed of the truck as he approaches the front door of the place and peers through the dirty glass. It’s deserted—which is pretty much to be expected. When he tugs on the handle, it doesn’t open, so he goes to the broken window instead, rips away the paper that covers it and then climbs inside. 

The shelves are not as empty as he would have expected, though they do look like they have been rifled through a little bit. There is a foul smell coming from the defunct hot dog cooker in the back, and the Slurpee machine has leaked all over the floor, but otherwise there is nothing alarming here. Chris can’t help but gaze longingly at the Diet Coke in the refrigerated section, but he knows it must be flat by now. He forces himself to focus on the task at hand.

It’s not a true convenience store, so staples like flour or sugar are nowhere to be found. There are a few loaves of bread, but they are rendered unrecognizable by a thick layer of blue mold that makes Chris’s nose wrinkle. Luckily, there is some promising stuff on the first aid aisle. Chris grabs it all—band-aids and aspirin and antibiotic cream and rolls of gauze. It’s hard not to think about how all of this will run out eventually too, and he has no idea what they’ll do then, but at least for now, they’ll be stocked up. One step at a time.

He grabs batteries too, and a few flashlights. More stuff that won’t last, but would be nice for now. If they are careful, and they keep making supply runs, they could probably stock up enough batteries to last years. It would be nice to be able to see on the dark paths at night without having to carry a lantern. 

The rest is pretty much a bust. It’s just junk food and candy, and Chris knows Manny will make faces at him if he brings any of that back. He does shove a pack of Twizzlers in his back pocket though, because they’re Zach’s favorite. It’s pathetic, but fuck it. It might put a smile on his face. 

Back out in the lot, Manny had good luck with the pumps, and all of their gas cans are full. Chris shows off his haul and then slings the bag into the back, and they get in and head down the road again. They hit a grocery store next, and Chris keeps watch at the door while Manny goes spelunking into the dark depths (with one of the flashlights Chris pilfered at the gas station). He comes out with the requisite flour and sugar, as well as dried beans and some canned food, though they’re mainly hoping to rely on canning their own fruits and vegetables from the garden. It never hurts to have a little extra though, especially during this first winter, while they are still trying to get their feet under them.

They search for a hardware store next, which means a little bit of an aimless drive. That is another thing to miss: GPS. The one on Chris’s phone might still work, but his phone has been dead for weeks now, and there is no electricity to charge it. No electricity also means no stoplights to pay attention to, and with no other cars on the road, it doesn’t take long to find what they’re looking for—a Home Depot, sitting at the end of a strip mall with a vast, empty parking lot. All that open asphalt makes Chris’s skin crawl, but at least it makes it easier to spot trouble from a distance.

“I’ve been thinking about doing a little renovating of our cabin,” Chris says as they climb out of the truck and walk toward the store entrance. “I want to make the windows bigger to let more light in, so we won’t have to use the lanterns and candles as much. I think maybe it would be good if we did that for all of them.”

Manny looks at him, then nods. “Yeah. That’d be good. We’ll need a lot more glass though.”

One of the front doors is hanging on by one hinge, so all they have to do is pull it aside to walk in. The towering rows of shelves stretch back and back into the darkness. Manny turns on the flashlight and swings it in a wide arc, illuminating dusty registers and empty shopping carts. 

“You run any of this by Susan yet?” Manny asks as they move farther inside, glancing down the aisles containing lightbulbs and chandeliers, things they probably aren’t going to be needing ever again.

“Nah,” Chris admits. “Should I have? I can’t imagine her disagreeing.”

“Probably not, but you never know. I guess we can bring back some window panes anyway. Can’t hurt to have ‘em around. But it’ll be a pain in the ass to carry them out.” He pauses, then snorts in amusement. “Hah. Pain. Pane.”

“You’re a riot,” Chris mutters, fighting a smile. He’s spent most of his time at The Camp wallowing and feeling sorry for himself, but he has to admit that the people are starting to grow on him, and none more than Manny. He doesn’t seem to let anything get him down, and while that could easily be irritating in such dire circumstances, it’s endearing coming from him. Maybe that’s why Chris has to ask, “What’s your story anyway?”

Manny doesn’t look at him, just veers down the aisle with all the screws and nails and expects Chris to follow after him, which he does. 

“Same story as anyone else,” he says with a shrug of his shoulder. “Lost everyone. We all lost everyone, didn’t we?”

Chris nods, catching his lower lip between his teeth, and waits for him to continue.

“I had a baby girl,” Manny says matter-of-factly. “She died back in January, when it was still…you know. Practically harmless. Just killing off the weak. My wife came down with it then too, but I didn’t. She probably would have survived, but she was just…she was so heartbroken, I think she lost the will to live, you know? Even before the fever made her delirious, she wouldn’t eat at all, wouldn’t even open her eyes. I begged her to try, but…I didn’t hold it against her. Giving up like that. I couldn’t hold it against her.”

Manny hands the flashlight off to Chris, who takes it in his shaky hands and tries to hold it steady while Manny dumps handfuls of nails into little plastic baggies.

“After she died, I had a feeling things were only going to get worse. The news wasn’t really playing it up then, which made me worried, because they always blow this kind of stuff out of proportion, you know? And then they started reporting people dying faster, and more of ‘em too, so I decided it was time to get out. I knew Susan from before, because I did repairs around her farm sometimes, and I figured a farm would be a good place to hunker down, so I went to find her. Just got lucky that she was still there. She’s smarter than me though, knew it would be too hard for us to protect a farm so close to the city. She’s the one that suggested going up into the mountains, and so we did. And here I am.”

The harsh rattle of the bag of nails hitting the concrete floor seems like fitting punctuation at the end of that story. Chris looks down at his feet and licks his lips, wishing he had something to say. “I’m sorry,” is all he can come up with. “What were their names? Your wife and daughter?”

“Justina and Reina,” Manny says. He reaches for another plastic bag, then looks up at Chris. “Who’ve you lost?”

Chris swallows hard. “My parents,” he says, around the thickness in his throat. “And my sister, probably. My brother-in-law. Don’t really know who else. With Zach sick, I didn’t really have time to go around to all my friends’ houses and check on them. That part sucks. Not knowing who’s still out there.”

Manny nods, scooping up a handful of screws. “But you’ve still got Zach.”

Chris’s snort is involuntary, and Manny stops what he’s doing to look at him, narrowing his eyes. It’s the first time Chris has seen him look anything less than amicable. He points a nail at Chris’s face. “Now, listen, Chris. Not everyone made it through this with someone they love. I understand you and your fella are struggling, but would you rather he was dead?”

“It’s not that,” Chris says, contrite. “Of course I wouldn’t rather he be dead. But he’s just…he’s not _mine_ anymore. We were…we were getting divorced.”

Manny seems to take that in stride, shaking his head and going back to his task. “That doesn’t mean anything anymore. The fact that you’re both still here means something. The fact that you were there for him when he needed you means something. And I’m positive that he knows that.”

Chris wants to argue with him. As far as he knows, Zach isn’t grateful at all to still be alive, and he certainly isn’t grateful that he’s stuck with Chris for good now. In fact, part of the reason Chris is so worried about this trip into LA is that he’s half expecting Zach to come back and declare that he’s going to go back and live in the city. Why else would he need to go back there? He is probably just checking to see how safe it is, to see whether he can make a life there by himself. And Chris would have no choice but to let him go. There is nothing holding them together anymore.

But it doesn’t seem right for him to tell a man who lost his whole family that Chris _feels_ like he’s lost his. He realizes that he’s being a little childish, and that regardless of how things are between himself and Zach, he should just be happy they are both okay. It’s just hard to feel grateful when his heart aches every time he meets Zach’s eyes, when he catches himself wanting to reach for him at least ten times a day. 

Seemingly sensing Chris’s reticence, Manny waves him over. “Here. Help me out and this’ll go faster. Then we can scope out the tools and the wood and see what they have by way of window panes.”

Chris sighs and sets the flashlight down on the ground, so the light is pointed at the ceiling and they can still see. He grabs a bag and gets to scooping. The sound of metal hitting metal echoes through the empty store, a reminder of how alone they are.

\----

_The only time Zach’s phone isn’t glued to his hand is when he’s in the shower, so naturally Chris waits until Zach is in the shower to snoop. It’s the wee hours of the morning, and normally he would still be sleeping, but he’s wide awake the moment he hears the water start running. He rolls across the bed and snatches Zach’s phone off the nightstand, opens the message app, and starts reading._

 __> >Are you going to be at the gallery opening on Thursday night?

>>Probably not. DH has an interview that afternoon so he’ll probably chain me to the couch afterward.

>>Just go without him. He doesn’t need you there and I feel like I never get to see you anymore.

>>I’ll see what I can do. I’d rather be there than here. __

_Chris keeps scrolling up through the conversation, ignoring the way it makes his stomach turn. He can’t tell by reading the texts if Zach ever fucked this guy—Peter, someone Chris doesn’t even remember meeting before—but it doesn’t matter. A line has been crossed either way. Zach talks to Peter incessantly. Worse than that, Zach has been telling him about things he hasn’t shared with Chris. An audition that he told Chris went “fine” in reality went terribly, to an embarrassing degree. Zach raved to Peter about a book that he told Chris was “just okay”. They talk about meeting up for drinks at times where Chris was out of town for business, times when Zach said he pretty much stayed in the whole time. Zach has been lying to him, both overtly and by omission, and though Chris already suspected as much, here is the damning evidence._

_This is the moment where his stomach is supposed to sink or his heart is supposed to jump into his throat or his vision is supposed to go red, but here in the real world, he isn’t shocked, isn’t mad. He’s just tired. So fucking tired._

_He’s so engrossed in reading that he doesn’t even notice that the water turned off, and when the bathroom door swings open, it’s too late for him to hide the phone. And he doesn’t really want to anyway. It’s about time they talked about this. He lifts his eyes and meets Zach’s stony gaze._

_“What are you doing?” Zach asks, his voice low and dangerous._

_“Oh, just learning about your life,” Chris says, looking down at the phone in his hand again. “This is really interesting. ‘Yeah, we are definitely still on for drinks on Thursday. Can’t wait to get out of this house.’ Who’s this good buddy of yours that you’re having so much fun with without me, Zach?”_

_Zach crosses the room and rips the phone out of Chris’s hand. “I can’t believe you were snooping through my phone, Chris,” he hisses. “That is a complete invasion of privacy.”_

_Now, Chris finds his anger. He throws back the sheets and gets to his feet, keeping the bed between them. “Oh, no, Zach. You don’t get to have the moral high ground on this one. You’re…you’re fucking _cheating_ on me.”_

_“I am_ not _cheating on you,” Zach says. He’s gripping his phone so tightly that his knuckles are white._

 _“I guess that answers the question of whether or not you fucked him,” Chris snaps. Zach blinks, probably as close to a flinch as he’ll get, and it just fuels Chris’s self-righteous rage. “I’ve got news for you,_ dearest _, you don’t have to go to bed with someone else to be a cheater. You’ve been pushing me away for_ months _, and all the while you were getting close to this guy. I don’t even know him. Who is he?”_

_“You’ve met him at least five times, Chris,” Zach says, as if that somehow will absolve him. “He’s that model who—”_

_“How old is he?” Chris interrupts._

_“What?”_

_“How-the-fuck old is he, Zach?”_

_Zach throws his hands up like Chris is the most ridiculous person in the world, like he doesn’t have a very real reason to be worried and angry. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”_

_“I just want to know who I’m getting chucked for, is all. Did you miss hanging out with kids half your age? Tired of being around someone you can’t feel intellectually superior too, who reminds you that you actually went over the hill a long-ass time ago?”_

_“Fuck you,” Zach spits. “And I’m not_ chucking _you, Jesus Christ. He’s just a friend. Just someone who will do things with me that_ you _don’t want to do.”_

_“Oh yeah? Like talking about books? Or about your career? Because I sure as fuck wouldn’t do either of those things, would I?”_

_“I need to have friends who aren’t you. Not every part of my life can revolve around you, Chris.”_

_“That’s not what I want!” Chris says, but as soon as the words come out of his mouth, he wonders if they’re really true. He doesn’t feel like he needs a whole lot outside of Zach—not emotionally, anyway. He has his sister, his parents. Once or twice a month he’ll go out for drinks with Patrick and Troian and whichever of the other guys happens to be in town, but he always invites Zach along too. He has hobbies outside of Zach—gardening and his guitar—and they both have work that sometimes takes them away from each other. So it’s not like his life revolves around Zach entirely. But he doesn’t feel like he needs a “Peter” in his life. When he has a bad day, he wants to tell Zach. When something amazing happens, he wants to tell Zach. Shouldn’t Zach feel the same way?_

_“I just feel like I’m losing you, Zach,” he says, quieter. There’s a hint of fear stirring underneath his anger, because he doesn’t know how this is going to be okay—not if Zach doesn’t even think he did anything wrong. “I feel like you don’t want to be with me. Sometimes I feel like you don’t even_ like _me.”_

_For one brief moment, shock flashes across Zach’s face, as if it didn’t even occur to him that Chris could come to such a conclusion. It fades quickly though, replaced by derision. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, rolling his eyes. “If anyone should feel that way, it’s me.”_

_Chris scoffs. He doesn’t want to hear it. It figures that, when his worst nightmare is coming true, Zach would find a way to make it all about him again._

_He swallows hard, gathers his tattered confidence, and throws up his shields. “I don’t want you seeing him anymore.”_

_And Zach laughs. He actually laughs. “That’s a great strategy. Isolate me more.”_

_“Are you fucking kidding me? This isn’t a game! I don’t have a fucking_ strategy _. But if this guy was nothing, you wouldn’t have lied to me about spending time with him. You wouldn’t be telling him things you don’t tell me.”_

_Zach stares at him for a handful of moments, his nostrils flaring like he’s pissed at Chris for daring to be right. Losing gracefully has never been his forte, and Chris doesn’t expect it to be pretty this time either. He can deal with Zach’s pouting, though. What he can’t deal with is Zach being gone._

_“Fine,” Zach snaps at last. “Fine, I’ll stop seeing him.”_

_With that, he turns and walks out of the room. Battle: over; winner: uncertain. Chris got what he wanted, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like the only thing he succeeded in is pushing Zach farther away._

\----

By the time they are nearing the turnoff for The Camp, the sun has sunk below the trees behind them, the light tinting everything gold and softening the stark emptiness that troubled Chris earlier. With the back of the pickup full of supplies and the cool, pine-scented breeze blowing through the open windows, he can’t help but relax a little bit. The fact that their little excursion went well makes him hopeful that Zach and Janine had similarly good luck. Soon they will all be back safe and sound, filling their stomachs with some of Vera’s delicious and resourceful cooking, telling jokes across the campfire. Chris even lets himself indulge in the fantasy that Zach will sit next to him at dinner, and tell him that he was right and there is nothing worth going back to LA for. Maybe they’ll end the night pressed shoulder to shoulder, like they used to back in the days where they sat in Zach’s backyard, sharing a beer and staring out over the lights of the city, imagining all the good things life had in store for them. Maybe not all of those good things are lost to them.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he startles when Manny hits the brakes.

“Wha—”

“Look,” Manny says, shifting the truck into park and pointing up the road, near the trees on the right. Chris follows his line of sight and then grins. A beautiful piebald quarter horse is standing just at the edge of the asphalt. Its neck is arched, its ears swiveling, its nostrils flaring as it smells the breeze. There is a frayed halter on its head and a lead rope hanging to the ground, so it must have belonged to someone at some point, but there is no one in sight now.

“We could use another horse,” Chris says. Rose still has some mileage left in her, but it would be nice to have a younger, stronger animal in case they ever need to do some serious work—plowing maybe, or scouting for supplies after they inevitably run out of gas.

“Exactly,” Manny agrees. “You know how to ride bareback?”

Chris purses his lips and shakes his head. He’s pretty confident on a horse, but he’s not _that_ confident. Maybe if it wasn’t very far back to The Camp, but they still have at least another mile to go, and after that it’s another couple miles up the dirt road.

“Alright. It’s okay. I do,” Manny says. “I might need your help catching him though. Come on.”

He cuts the engine and hands the keys to Chris, who pockets them as he climbs out of the truck. The slam of the door seems loud in the quiet woods. Chris listens, but he doesn’t hear the sound of any other cars, any other people. Only soft birdsong and the wind through the trees. 

The horse whickers nervously at them as they approach, but it doesn’t seem ready to bolt. Who knows how long the poor thing has been wandering around out here, probably lonely and a little scared. Chris doesn’t want to think about how many abandoned domesticated animals are out there now, confused about the state of things, doomed to starvation or predation. At least they can save this one.

“Easy, buddy,” Manny croons, holding his hands out in front of him as he approaches the horse’s shoulder. Chris hangs back a little, not wanting to spook the animal by ganging up on it. Its ears twitch and start to tip back a little in warning, but when Manny gets one gentle hand on its neck, it visibly relaxes, lowering its head and whickering again as Manny strokes it and murmurs placating nonsense. 

“You didn’t tell me you were the horse whisperer,” Chris teases.

“I’m a man of many talents.” Manny shoots him a wink over his shoulder, then beckons him closer with a jerk of his head. “Come give me a boost.”

Chris approaches the horse’s side and reaches up to run a hand over its soft rump. Manny grabs the dirty lead rope and drapes it over the horses withers, then gets a grip in its mane with one hand. Chris squats down and laces his fingers to make a foothold, and Manny steps up and swings his leg over in one impressive, graceful movement, rumbling one low “whoa” when the horse startles forward a couple steps. 

“You good?” Chris asks as he steps back, peering up at him.

“Yeah, I think so.” He nudges the horses forward a few more steps, like he’s testing the waters. “Here, come here and tie the other end of this lead to the other side of the halter. It’s not a bridle, but it’ll have to do.”

Chris circles around the horse’s head and does as he’s told, tying a loose knot with the end of the rope through one ring of the halter. The horse turns its face into his shoulder and huffs, then mouths at the sleeve of his t-shirt, drawing a laugh out of him. He reaches up to stroke its soft cheek, then rub its forehead. “Don’t bolt or anything, okay, Horse? Take care of this man.”

Manny grins down at him. “You drive the truck on ahead, slowly. I’m hoping he’ll just end up following you and I won’t have to steer much.”

“You got it.” 

Chris makes it halfway back to the truck before the man steps out of the trees and levels a rifle at him.

The man is dirty—filthy, even—his hair unkempt and shiny with grease, his clothes stained, his skin gray with dirt. His eyes are wide and feral, and his lips pull away from his teeth in a wild parody of a grin. Chris’s heart speeds up so fast it makes him lightheaded, and he raises his hands on instinct, a pointless attempt to show that he’s harmless. Something tells him this man wouldn’t see anyone as harmless.

“That your truck?” the stranger asks without taking his eyes off him. Chris’s heart sinks. They are about to lose all their stuff, a whole day’s hard work. 

“Listen, friend,” Manny says from somewhere behind him. Chris hears the sound of hooves on pavement, indicating that he’s riding closer, but he doesn’t dare turn around to look. “We’ll give you anything you need. We have plenty to go around. Just put the gun down.”

“Stay back,” the man warns, shifting the muzzle of the gun toward Manny. “Stay where you are.”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Manny insists. “Neither of us is armed. We’re not a threat.”

The man is too far gone, and Chris knows it. There is no hint of humanity in his eyes. They are so fucked, and he has no idea what to do about it. If this was a movie, he would lunge for the guy, yank the gun out of his hands, and save the day. But this is real life, and there is too much distance between them. Chris would get shot before he even got a hand on him, he’s sure of it.

“I’m taking the truck,” the man says. 

“No, you can’t—”

“Chris, it’s not worth it,” Manny says.

“I’m taking the truck,” the man repeats. He starts sidling his way toward it, keeping the gun aimed in their direction. Chris keeps his hands up and watches him, feeling pissed and helpless. All their food, all their supplies, _and_ their means of transporting it. They don’t have another pickup back at the camp. Manny is right, it’s not worth fighting someone with a gun for all of it, but it still boils Chris’s blood that this is happening to them, that this guy can’t just be _reasonable_.

The man has almost made it to the truck when the sound of an engine reaches Chris’s ears. A car is coming. He turns his head to look, squinting into the distance, but there is a bend in the road a little ways down, and whoever it is, Chris can’t see them yet. Maybe they’ll be helpful. Maybe they’ll see a crazy guy waving a gun at two innocent bystanders and intercede on their behalf. 

Chris gets to hold onto that comforting thought for about two seconds before their antagonist hears the car too, his head snapping toward the sound and then back toward them. 

“Who is that?” he demands. “Are there others with you?”

“No!” Chris takes a half step forward. “No, no, it’s not—”

He’s too late. The gunshot is loud—louder than the glorified cap guns they use on set, so loud that Chris isn’t prepared for it. Behind him, the horse shrieks. He ducks on instinct, pawing at his own chest, expecting his hands to come away wet and sticky. But he isn’t hit. The shot wasn’t meant for him. He turns his head and glimpses the horse a few yards away, prancing in place, eyes rolling in fright. And next to it, on the ground, is Manny, a bullet hole in his forehead.

“N—”

And then comes the second shot. This time, Chris doesn’t have to check to tell if he’s been hit. Excruciating pain blooms through the left side of his body, like someone stabbed him with a white hot poker. He collapses to the ground, his head hitting the pavement a little too hard and making stars burst in front of his eyes. The road might as well be a feather bed for all he can feel it, though. The only thing he is aware of is the agony in his shoulder, much more pain than should be caused by one tiny bullet. He makes the mistake of trying to shift to his side, thinking he can crawl out of the way, avoid getting shot a second time. But moving makes it worse, makes the pain more intense and makes him aware of the slow ooze of blood. 

All he can think is _not like this_. Not with Zach so far away. He wants to see him smile one more time. He wants to tell him that he loves him, never stopped loving him, never will stop loving him. It seems unfair, how little time they had. Chris would have turned forty next year, but he’s known Zach only about a quarter of that time and was married to him only a tiny fraction of it. So many years lost. He’ll never get to see Zach’s gray hair. He’ll never get a chance to win his heart back.

His vision is going black around the edges when he lifts his eyes, looks down to the road. The car coming toward them shimmers, and it takes Chris a moment to realize it’s because of the tears in his eyes—pain or grief or both. If they’re coming to save him, they’re too late. Too late to save Manny too. Oh fuck, Manny.

There is a second shot. Chris cries out. Before his vision goes dark, he places the car. It’s a red Civic. It’s Zach.

\----

_Chris’s hands have been steadily tightening on the wheel for the past twenty minutes, and now his knuckles are white, and he’s getting a headache from clenching his jaw so tight. They have been driving in silence for twenty minutes, but his head is still ringing with the noise from the bar. His whole body is vibrating with it, like a harp string wound too tight and plucked too hard._

_”Zach, will you put down the phone for one fucking second?” he snaps. “For Christ’s sake.”_

_“I’m not bothering you,” Zach says flatly. He doesn’t even look in Chris’s direction, not even when Chris takes his eyes off the road for a moment to stare at him in disbelief._

_“If you weren’t bothering me, I wouldn’t have said anything.”_

_Zach lets out the most irritatingly put-upon sigh Chris has ever heard in his life and then drops his phone into his lap. He doesn’t even bother locking it first. Whatever stupid, pointless, no-doubt pretentious article he was reading is still on the screen, and Chris can see it reflected in the windshield. He grips the wheel tighter, until his knuckles pop._

_“Okay, what the fuck, Chris? What’s wrong this time?”_

_“So we’re just going to pretend you weren’t flirting with that fucking kid all night?”_

_Zach rolls his eyes. Chris can’t see it, but he can feel it. “You are so exhausting, do you know that? How many times do we have to have this conversation?”_

_“As many times as it takes,” Chris spits. “I might as well have not even been there. You ignored me all fucking night.”_

_“Well excuse me for not wanting to stand in a corner and avoid everyone. I don’t see why you even bother leaving the house.”_

_“Mostly to make sure you don’t decide to go home with some twink one of these nights!”_

_The words are out, and Chris can’t take them back. He has the sudden urge to stomp on the brakes in the middle of the road. He wants to throw his arms around Zach’s neck and kiss his face and tell him he didn’t mean it—of course he didn’t mean it. But he still said it, because he wanted to hurt Zach, and one glance at Zach’s face tells him he definitely has hit his mark._

\----

The first thing Chris becomes aware of is the pain. It’s duller now—not the bright, searing misery he felt laying there on the road, but an ache that seems to extend from the center of his chest all the way down his left arm. He gasps, then instantly regrets it when the quick inhale makes the pain sharper for a moment, makes him wish he could slip back into unconsciousness.

But pain is a good sign. Pain means he’s not dead.

How is he not dead?

He tries to open his eyes three times before he actually succeeds, and when he does, he wonders if he’s not in the afterlife after all, because the first thing he sees is Zach’s face. Zach’s beautiful face—his expression somehow full of relief and concern at once. Warm fingers slide across Chris’s forehead, and he turns into the touch, his eyes fluttering but not closing, because he can’t bring himself to look away. He’s afraid if he closes his eyes and opens them again, Zach will be gone.

“How do you feel?” Zach asks. It’s a ridiculous opening line. Chris would laugh, but all he can manage is a weak smile.

“Like I got shot,” he says.

Zach huffs, but he doesn’t grin. He lowers his hand from Chris’s face and grips his hand instead. “I thought you were dead.”

Chris swallows hard, then closes his eyes again, because he can’t stand to look at Zach for this part. “I thought I was dead too.” He still doesn’t understand why he isn’t. “What happened? How am I…?”

“A whole fucking lot of luck,” Zach says.

He eases into the story, speaking low and soft like he’s afraid Chris might be hurt by the sound of his voice. It doesn’t hurt though. It’s soothing, even if it’s telling him things he’s not sure he wants to hear.

Zach and Janine were the ones driving up just as Chris was shot, just as he thought. LA had been a total bust. Unlike Riverside, the city was like a warzone—storefronts smashed in, homes on fire, blockades set up to keep cars off some of the streets. They were able to make it to the house, but it had been ransacked by looters. Anything of value was taken. There were still some clothes in the closet and a few keepsakes, which Zach brought back with him, but otherwise it was a mess. Joe’s place was just as bad—worse even than when Chris was there. They gathered up what they could, but ultimately they decided it wasn’t safe to hang around in LA long, and they turned around and headed back to The Camp.

“We saw the truck before we saw you,” Zach says. Chris figures he was already on the ground by the time they came around the bend. “And then we got closer and saw you and Manny. And that man…”

He trails off for a moment. Chris opens his eyes and looks at Zach’s face again, but there isn’t much to see there. He’s staring at some point on Chris’s shoulder, the edge of a bandage, maybe. Someone has wrapped Chris up good—now that he has gotten used to the pain, he can feel the gauze and tape on his chest, pulling at his skin.

Zach clears his throat and goes on. “The man who shot you shot at us too. Hit the windshield, scared the shit out of me. Janine jumped out of the car before I even knew what was happening. I always thought I was good under pressure, but she…she was like a machine. She shot that guy three times without even flinching, then ran over to you, and I just…I was still sitting there. In the car. There was so much blood, and I could see that Manny was…I thought you were both gone.”

Chris squeezes Zach’s fingers, a reminder that he’s not gone at all. Zach shakes himself, takes a deep breath, and goes on.

Eventually Janine coaxed Zach out of the car to help her get Chris into the backseat, “which is now completely ruined,” he jokes, but it falls flat. He doesn’t look like he wants to think about Chris slowly bleeding out on the upholstery any more than Chris himself wants to imagine it. 

“The drive back to camp was the longest drive of my life. I think I almost rolled the car at least ten times. That stupid fucking dirt road. And that tiny Honda. We should just push it off a fucking cliff.”

Janine drove the truck back, Zach tells him, but they had to leave Manny’s body there at first. There was no time. They had to get Chris to Harmony, stop the bleeding. The bullet went straight through, but they were worried at first it could have nicked a lung or hit a major artery. But Chris was lucky, so lucky. Impossibly lucky. That Zach and Janine would come along just in time, that he got shot at that close a range and it hadn’t hit anything major, that they were close enough to The Camp that he could get patched up quickly. If just one of those things hadn’t been true, he might not have made it. 

While Harmony worked to patch up Chris, Janine took Susan and Kyle back down to get Manny’s body. The horse was still there too, standing guard over him, like it knew someone would come back for him, for both of them. 

“We already buried him, Chris,” Zach says softly. “I asked them to wait for you, but we didn’t know when you’d wake up, with how much blood you lost. You’ve been out for more than a day, and…since you probably wouldn’t be able to get up and walk out there anyway…”

Chris nods. He understands. He fucking hates it, but he still understands. “I liked him, Zach.”

It’s not even a tiny fraction of what he wants to say. Manny was a good guy—hardworking and funny, didn’t think the world owed him anything, even though it had been shitty to him. Anyone would have liked him. He had only been in Chris’s life a little less than three months, but of course Chris was going to like him. The thing that is getting to Chris is that Manny liked him back. The world is different now—full of too much silence and apparently semi-feral men with rifles—and still some people find the courage to reach out to others, trust people who might turn around and hurt them. Manny smiled at him and called him Jim Kirk when they first met. He offered food and aid to a man who was pointing a gun at them.

Manny chose to believe in other people, people he didn’t even know. And Chris is lying in bed now, looking up at a man who owns so much of his heart, and wondering why they stopped believing in _each other_.

Zach slides his hand up Chris’s arm and gives his bicep a gentle squeeze. “I know you did. We all did.”

“Did someone speak? Say some kind of parting words?”

“Susan did,” Zach says. “She knew him best. But she kept it short and sweet. I think she’s hurting.”

“He had a wife and a daughter,” Chris whispers, like a secret. “You know, before all this.”

“I know. He told me.”

“He told you?” Chris squints at him, trying to assimilate that piece of information. Sometimes he forgets that Zach hasn’t been as standoffish with the others as he has. He wonders, for the first time, how much he is missing. How can he let these people make this place home for him if he’s not letting them in? 

“Maybe he’s…maybe he’s with them now,” Zach says. As staunchly agnostic as Chris is, he lets those words comfort him in this moment, taking them in the spirit in which they were meant. Even if there is no such thing as a soul or an afterlife, it could still be true that some essence of Manny is out there in the universe now, mingling with family who left him behind in this harsh world. 

“Anyway,” Zach continues, pulling his hand away from Chris’s arm and getting to his feet, “you should get some more rest. A lot more rest. We want you back on your feet as soon as possible.” 

The return to practicality is a welcome one. Chris isn’t sure what to do with the way Zach has been talking to him, the way he’s been touching him, or the expression on his face. When they were getting in their separate cars to go down the mountain, Chris told Zach to be careful and Zach hadn’t even looked at him. Now it’s like he can’t look away. Chris knows he was scared—it’s written all over his face—but he doesn’t want to hope that it means anything.

Outside, it looks like the sun is coming up, judging by the gray light sneaking its way in through the dirty windows. Chris wonders if Zach sat by his bed all night, or if he just happened to be getting up and getting ready when he noticed him stirring. That will probably stay a mystery, because he’s too chickenshit to ask.

“I need to go help Henry with the animals, but Harmony should be in to check on you soon,” Zach says. 

Chris nods, watching as Zach turns away. But, no. He hasn’t said everything he wants to say yet. “Zach?”

Zach turns back to him, eyebrows raised. “Hmm?”

“Thank you. For…saving me.”

An odd expression flashes across Zach’s face—a mixture of sadness and what seems like fear. He looks away from Chris and down at the floor, shaking his head. “Don’t thank me,” he mutters. When he lifts his head again, his eyes are gleaming, shiny in the semi-darkness. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Chris stares at the spot where Zach was standing long moments after his footsteps carry him out the front door. He blinks at the empty air and tries to figure out what that means, or what Zach wants him to think it means. It’s always riddles with Zach, and all Chris wants is answers. And if ever he deserved answers, it’s now, when he almost lost the chance to know them. One thing is sure, though: if Zach is banking on the fact that Chris is done trying to figure him out, then he has another thing coming. Life hasn’t given up on Chris, so Chris isn’t giving up on Zach, who is, even now, the best reason he has to be alive.


	5. Chapter 5

There is a small mound of dirt in the clearing near the barn, with a makeshift cross, held together with twine. No name plate, no epitaph—but anything that could be scrawled on cardboard or plywood would only be washed away by the elements anyway. Someday that cross will rot away too, and the ground will level out, and no one will even know that Manuel Garza is buried in this spot. 

Chris sits cross-legged at the end of the grave, his fingers sunk into the loose earth. He keeps sifting it through his fingers, feeling the coolness of it against his palms, focusing on the texture of the dirt in order to keep him from focusing on what’s underneath it. Is this sacrilegious, he wonders? Is it grave desecration? It doesn’t matter anymore. No one is going to care. There are enough people out there who didn’t get graves that worrying about one of the ones who did would just be ridiculous.

With a wince, he reaches up to shift the strap on the makeshift sling that Naomi fashioned for him. She used to make her own clothes, she told him as she sat at his bedside, drawing a needle through an old shirt again and again. She could make clothes for them too, if she had fabric. But they don’t have fabric. And they have enough clothes. What they don’t have enough of are smiles, jokes, feelings of safety. Chris almost asked her if she could whip up any of those, but he realized just in time that it wouldn’t exactly be a tactful thing to say. Manny’s death has taken a toll on everyone, and Chris keeps having to remind himself that he doesn’t have some special monopoly on mourning just because he was there when it happened.

He wasn’t there when they buried him though, which is why he has chosen this morbid perch. That, and the fact that he isn’t good for much else at the moment. His legs work, but his arm is pretty much out of commission, and there are not many chores to be done around The Camp that can be done by a one-armed man. It figures that just when Chris most wants something to distract himself, he is reduced to invalid status, doomed to walk around aimlessly and get on everyone’s nerves. Harmony says he should just stay in bed, that he’ll heal faster if he doesn’t overdo it, but he already laid in bed four days, and that was enough to drive him half out of his mind. A couple years ago, he might have day-dreamed about having a whole week to curl up in bed with a stack of books, but things are different now.

Footsteps crunch down the path behind him, but he doesn’t bother turning around to look. It’s not Zach—that much he knows for sure. Zach’s step is so familiar to him, he could identify it in his sleep. And if it isn’t Zach, he doesn’t care.

“I see you’re making yourself useful,” says Susan. 

Chris snorts and shakes his head, sinking his fingers straight down into the dirt again, like he’s daring her to comment. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of an invalid.”

“You still have one working hand.” 

The footsteps come closer, then stop beside him. Chris squints up into the sunlight, not even bothering to shade his face. Is it just his imagination, or is Susan’s hair grayer now than it was a few days ago? She was friends with Manny, knew him before all of this shit went down. Maybe it’s been rough for her. If it has been, it’s hard to tell. Her back is straight and her hands rest on her hips and the set of her jaw is as authoritative and determined as ever. 

“Yeah, tell me what I can do with one hand, and I’ll get right to it,” Chris grumbles. 

“I called a meeting,” Susan says. She walks to the head of Manny’s grave and sets two fingers on the top of the cross, nudging it a little more upright. “Everyone else will be down here in a sec.”

“You called a meeting _here_?” Chris asks, narrowing his eyes.

She gives him a look that clearly says _I don’t have to answer to you_ , and Chris bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping at her. As much as she keeps saying she’s not the boss, she sort of is. Everyone listens to her. Everyone looks to her for the plan. If she wants to have a town hall session over Manny’s dead body, then who is going to tell her no? Knowing her, she probably has her reasons.

Right on cue, another pair of footsteps approach, and then another couple after that. People trickle in—Kyle and Naomi, Vera with Oliver’s hand clasped in hers, Janine and Tristan, Harmony and Henry, and then Zach all by himself. Chris looks away when Zach walks up. He turns his eyes down to the ground and curls his fingers into a fist, crushing a handful of damp earth against his palm. Things have been uncertain between them since their conversation the day Chris got shot. Chris isn’t sure how to act around him, and that’s a strange feeling.

“Alright. I guess we’re all here,” Susan says, crossing her arms over her chest and looking around their sad little circle. No one seems to want to look directly at the mound of dirt, except for Chris, who has refused to get to his feet. Hopefully everyone will give him a pass, being that he got shot a few days ago. If he can’t work, he’s at least going to milk his disability for all it’s worth.

“Is there a reason we’re _here_?” It’s Zach who speaks up, and Chris can hear the distaste in his voice. Zach’s disdain can be a powerful thing, but Susan doesn’t wither in the face of it. She raises her eyebrows at him and nods.

“There is. We need to talk about protecting ourselves.”

Naomi, the tender-hearted poet, is the first one to raise protest. “What does that mean? Guns?”

“Maybe guns,” Susan answers.

“And where on Earth are we going to get those?” It’s Vera who speaks up now, clutching a wriggling Oliver to her thigh. “You aren’t suggesting endangering our people again on a trip to get weapons?”

“We might all be in danger if we don’t. That man came out of nowhere, and he killed one of our people. It could happen again. It could happen any time.”

Chris hates the way his stomach turns over at the thought. The last few nights have already been plagued by nightmares, and he has a feeling they aren’t going to go away any time soon. He has played heroes time and time again in his life, but when the shit hits the fan in the real world, it turns out that he doesn’t feel much like a hero at all. He has never been much of a leader, and his cushy movie-star life never forced him to be _really_ brave. The most scared he ever was before the other day was when he realized that Zach wasn’t coming back home to him. As much as he wants to stand up in front of these people and be Captain Kirk, rally them with a speech about justice and protecting their little family, he doesn’t feel like he has it in him. In fact, he’s not even sure where he stands. Finally, he turns to look to Zach, hoping to draw strength from him even now. 

Zach’s entire body is tense, a muscle in his jaw jumping. He looks like he would love to unleash a tirade on Susan, or possibly the whole group, but he is just barely holding himself back. His gaze darts toward Chris, and their eyes meet, and the contact holds steady for one second, two seconds, long enough for Chris to straighten his shoulders a little bit and take a deep breath. It feels like Zach wants him to speak, so he’s going to speak.

“I don’t think we should try to arm ourselves,” he says, and he’s amazed at how steady his voice manages to be. 

The words have a palpable effect on the group. They shift and hum thoughtfully, like leaves rippling in a breeze, but it’s hard to tell whether it is a positive reaction or a negative one. Maybe both in equal measures. Susan certainly doesn’t look happy to be contradicted, but she doesn’t look murderous like Zach either. 

“And why, pray tell, is that, Chris?” she asks.

Chris sighs and climbs to his feet, grimacing at the way it jostles his arm. Harmony steps forward to grip his good elbow, and though he doesn’t need the steadying, he smiles at her anyway. After he brushes the dirt off his jeans, he levels his gaze at Susan again. 

“I don’t think Manny would have wanted it,” he says, trying to keep his voice gentle. “The last thing he did was offer help to that man. He wanted to feed him, give him anything he wanted. If he could have de-escalated the situation he would have. I think the thought of us becoming scared and militarized would have pissed him off.”

Susan narrows her eyes, but it’s Kyle who speaks next. “But you just said he would have de-escalated _if he could have_. Clearly he couldn’t have. And maybe if he had a gun, he’d still be alive.”

“Would he have?” asks Naomi. “If he had a gun, would he have killed that man?”

“He wouldn’t have,” Chris says.

“But you might have!” Zach takes a half-step toward him. “You could have saved yourself _and_ him.”

“Zach, I don’t know if I—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Vera cuts in. She has hoisted her grandson up onto her hip now, and he has his face buried in her neck, clearly alarmed by the raised voices of the adults. Chris feels a pang of guilt. He wishes they didn’t have to have this conversation in front of a child. He wishes they didn’t have to have it at all. Vera looks like she is thinking the exact same thing. “It doesn’t matter whether having a gun could have saved them or not, because going back out there to get weapons is a risk, and we can’t afford to lose any more people!”

“Why not?” Kyle says, sarcasm in his voice. “Less people means less mouths to feed, doesn’t it?”

“And less people to help out!” Vera shoots back. “Who can we afford to lose? Our doctor? Our vet? Our rancher? Our gardener? We couldn’t even afford to lose Manny, but it’s too late for that!”

She’s right. Manny was the most useful member of their group. He could build, he could fix things, he knew a bit about animals, a bit about gardening. He was the closest thing they had to a jack of all trades, and now he is six feet under. Chris has to remind himself what it was all for: a storage room that is now almost twice as full as it was, enough food to make it through the winter, enough supplies that they don’t have to feel bad modifying cabins and using flashlights instead of lanterns for a little while. Was it worth it though? Is that what a human’s life amounts to? Or are all lives just worth a little less these days?

They can’t start thinking that way—in terms of who they can sacrifice. And they can’t start giving in to fear either. If they do, that’s it. There’s no going back to the way things used to be, to the way humanity used to be. 

Harmony, who has been quiet so far, speaks up now. “I don’t want to fix up any more gunshot wounds,” she says. Her chin is raised defiantly, and she has drawn herself up to full height, which manages to be impressive even though she’s the shortest among them, save for Oliver. “I’ve seen enough people die. For now, we are _safe_. We have food for the winter, and no one is going to go to _higher_ altitude with the winter coming on. This doesn’t have to change everything.”

“It _does_ change everything though,” Zach snaps. Chris takes an involuntary step toward him, wanting to put a hand on his shoulder and settle him, but Henry, who is closer, beats him to it.

“We should have a vote,” Henry says. He isn’t the most talkative among them, but when he speaks, it’s hard not to listen. There’s something Clooney-esque about him, a quiet charisma. 

“Yes,” says Vera. “This isn’t a dictatorship, is it?”

Susan bristles at that, her eyes narrowing, but she wisely doesn’t try to argue the point. This is a make-or-break situation here, the first time they have to make a big, life-altering decision as a group. Everyone is on-edge, and Chris has a feeling the whole thing could come crumbling down around them at even the slightest misstep. He is relieved when Susan sets her jaw and nods.

“Fine. A vote.” She glances briefly down at the grave, then around the circle at each one of them. “All those in favor of sending some people in search of more weapons, raise your hand.”

Her own hand goes up first. Kyle’s follows, then Janine’s. Chris’s heart clenches as he meets Janine’s eyes. She didn’t even speak up during the debate, but she is the only one among them who has had to kill another person recently. Her opinion has some weight. Chris starts to hang his head, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees one more hand go up. Zach’s. 

“All opposed?” Susan asks.

Chris, Vera, Henry, Harmony, Naomi, and Tristan all put their hands up. It’s six to five. The nays have it.

“Well, that settles it,” Susan says, brushing her hands together like she’s washing them of the decision. Zach looks pissed. Chris thinks of every conversation they’ve had about gun control in the time they have known each other, and he feels like he’s going to be sick. 

“It’s better this way,” Vera says. She shifts Oliver to her other hip and gently strokes his hair. He is subdued, obviously affected by the tense atmosphere in the clearing, his wide eyes fixed on some point in the trees. Vera is obviously getting tired of holding him, her posture sagging, but she doesn’t put him down. “We can’t just be afraid all the time.”

“How is not being able to protect ourselves going to fix that?” Kyle snaps. He and Vera have a stare-down for a moment, before Kyle finally huffs and stalks out of the clearing. 

The others trickle after him, all with varying degrees of stress etched into their expressions, until it is just Chris and Susan left. Chris considers plopping back down in the dirt, making it clear on no uncertain terms that he has every right to be here, but he’s too emotionally exhausted to start a fight with her. She is hurting, he knows. It doesn’t make it any less shitty that she tried to pull such a potentially dangerous stunt, but he has to be the bigger person and cut her a little slack.

That doesn’t mean completely letting her off the hook though. “Thank you,” he says, “for not pulling rank. But next time you want us all to make a big, important decision, maybe pick a less emotionally manipulative venue.”

And then he turns and walks away, aware that he’s being a little childish but too tired to care. All he wants to do now is go back to the cabin and fall into bed—and hopefully sleep until his shoulder is healed and everyone is in their right frame of mind again. But just as he reaches the main path back to the lodge area, he spots Zach, leaning against a tree, obviously waiting to ambush him. When Chris nears, he straightens up. There is a muscle jumping in his jaw, and his hands keep clenching and unclenching.

“Chris, you were shot,” he hisses, like he’s reminding Chris of something he isn’t already painfully—literally _painfully_ —aware of. “I can’t believe you don’t care enough to keep something like that from happening again.”

“If you really think I don’t care _enough_ , then you are fucking blind,” Chris snaps right back.

He doesn’t have anything more to say on the matter, and he’s not going to let Zach draw him into another argument when it’s not going to make any difference anyway. Zach likes to win, likes to get the last word, but Chris isn’t going to let him have either of those things this time. He sidesteps him and brushes right on by. For a split second, he thinks Zach is going to reach out to stop him, and he almost wishes he would, but it doesn’t happen. Zach lets him go. It doesn’t feel as good as Chris thought it would.

\----

_It’s the kind of scene that should make Chris’s heart flip-flop in his chest. Zach is outlined in thin morning sunshine, one fixed, dark point in the foreground of a beautiful golden landscape. He has a coffee mug clutched between his hands, and he’s wearing a t-shirt from their trip to Yellowstone a few months back. His eyebrows are pinched against what is probably a slight hangover headache, but he still makes a pretty picture._

_And yet Chris doesn’t feel much of anything. Zach got in late last night, after he was already asleep, and when he opened his eyes this morning, Zach was already out of bed. It feels like he sees just about everyone in his life more than he sees his husband. Missing the person you live with is depressing, and they have to do it enough when one of them is filming something. Why is it that he has to do it when they are under the same roof?_

_“Having trouble sleeping?” Chris asks, stepping out on the patio but keeping his distance. Zach turns his head toward him with a passable attempt at a smile, then looks back out over the pool and the yard and takes a sip of his coffee._

_“Can we go to New York next week?” he asks. Well, no. It’s seems like a question, but Chris sees it for what it is: Zach informing him that he’s going to New York next week, and that Chris can come if he wants. Because Zach is generous like that._

_“Sure,” he says, feeling backed into a corner. It isn’t that he doesn’t like New York, but it worries him that Zach still seems to miss it so much, after all this time. And he doesn’t get it, either. Would Zach really rather step out his back door and see concrete and skyscrapers than palm trees and bougainvillea? Most of their friends are here. Their life is here. Chris still doesn’t know why Zach moved away in the first place, but his desire to go back is even more of a mystery. Still, what can he do? He can’t keep Zach trapped here. “Sure,” he says again. “We can do that. We should get tickets to a show. Is there anything you want to see?”_

_Zach lets out a noncommittal hum instead of an answer. Chris chooses to take that as a yes._

_“Should we get a car and drive out to see your mom while we’re there?”_

_It’s hard to read the way Zach’s nose wrinkles and his jaw clenches. Is that annoyance at Chris for having to ask? Or is it annoyance at the very suggestion? Does he want to spend the whole time in New York club-hopping with his theater friends? Why is it so hard to just_ say what he wants _?_

_“I’ll book us a car either way,” Chris says. “It could come in handy.”_

_“Yeah, that’s good,” Zach says, nodding. Finally, he turns all the way toward Chris and walks over to him, then surprises him by leaning in for a quick peck. “Thank you. For being…flexible.”_

_“Of course,” Chris says, a little bewildered. He gives Zach’s bicep a squeeze and then kisses him again, wanting to drag out the moment as long as he can. “You don’t need to thank me though. It’s no hardship. I want to go where you go.”_

_Zach raises his eyebrows, as if he doesn’t believe that, and the spell is broken. Chris swallows hard around his frustration._

_“Want breakfast?” he asks, before he can let his irritation gather too much steam. “I’ll make eggs.”_

_“Yeah, thanks.” Zach favors him with the barest ghost of a smile. With his heart in his throat, Chris leans in for one last kiss._

\----

Chris is restless. A week has gone by, and still he can’t work. The sling is off, but the range of motion in his arm is pathetic, and it’s a hardship to do anything much more strenuous than dressing himself. Already the weather is getting colder, and everyone is busy welcoming fall and preparing for winter, but Chris is utterly useless. He spends some of his time supervising Naomi, who has taken over for him in the garden, but he doesn’t exactly need to stand over her and tell her how to pull weeds or what a ripe tomato looks like. He tries to help Vera with canning, but he can’t do much more than hold jars for her, and mostly he gets in the way. Feeding the horses or milking the goats is completely out of the question. Mostly he spends his time wandering from place to place, person to person, on the off chance they will give him something to do or at least let him keep them company for a while.

The only person he avoids is Zach, but only because Zach started avoiding him first. Or restarted, he guesses. Whatever it was that happened between them right after Chris got shot was apparently just a fluke, because things are just as bad now as they were before—maybe even a little worse. Chris doesn’t think they have said a single word to each other since that camp meeting, save “excuse me” or “good night”. If he concentrates, he can still feel Zach’s fingers on his face, after he woke up in bed with a bullet hole in his shoulder. But now that seems long ago and far away.

He doesn’t think he can put up with it anymore. Boredom has weakened his self-control, and with nothing but time on his hands, he figures he might as well force this confrontation that they’re going to have eventually anyway. So when everyone starts gathering for dinner, he heads down to the river, knowing he’ll catch Zach alone during his evening dip, and that they will have privacy for a while.

Chris reaches the riverbank just as the light is going soft and blue, the sun having disappeared below the treetops a while ago. The water burbles along gently, joining in with the sound of the crickets to make a calming evening soundtrack. It’s barely more than a stream, really—Chris could throw a rock and hit the other side of it—but it’s deep enough that just Zach’s head and shoulders stick out of the water when he’s standing in the middle of it, as he is now, his back turned to Chris. His clothes lay in a heap in the dark dirt on the bank, a towel resting carefully on top. 

Though Chris should really be making his presence known, he can’t help but stand there at the edge of the trees and watch for a little while. Zach has a bar of homemade soap in one hand, and he rubs it across the back of his neck, the tops of his shoulders, up into his armpits. He makes a lather in his hands and works it into his hair. Chris wonders how much he is crying internally about the fact that he doesn’t have all his usual products and unguents. He wishes he could tease him about it, like old times. He wishes he could wade into the water and help him rinse the suds out.

Zach sinks under the water to rinse off, and when he comes up again, he is facing Chris. He wipes water out of his eyes, spots him, and freezes, his mouth pulling into a thin, irritated line.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, accusatory right out of the gate.

“I came to talk to you.” Chris steps closer, until the water is lapping right at the toes of his shoes. The river is clean and mostly clear, so he feels obligated to keep his eyes on Zach’s, not dip his gaze to take in the distorted silhouette of his submerged body. But Zach is moving closer now, so pretty soon that’s going to be a moot point.

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” he says, predictably.

“Yeah, we do,” Chris insists. “You’ve been giving me the cold shoulder since the other day, and I thought…”

Zach sneers at him. “You thought what? That I was going to take pity on you because you got hurt, and things would go back to how they were?”

As Zach steps out of the water and Chris has to avert his eyes, both because he doesn’t want the first time he’s seen Zach naked in months to be like this, and because he needs to hide the way those words cut him. It isn’t exactly what he thought—he didn’t want Zach to do anything out of pity—but it’s close enough to the truth that it makes him feel stupid for hoping. 

“I just want to know what bug’s up your ass,” he lies. Thankfully, when he does look up again, there is a towel wrapped around Zach’s waist.

Zach scowls and swipes his wet hair off his forehead. A water drop is clinging to his nose, and Chris wants to step closer and wipe it away. “Give me a break, Pine. Just because I’m not following you around like a lost puppy doesn’t mean there’s something wrong.”

“But there _is_ something wrong. Can you stop pretending like I don’t know you for one fucking second? Just…just talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to say.” 

Zach bends down and picks up his underwear, then tugs them on under the towel, which feels like a slap in the face. Not that Chris wanted to look anyway, but the shock of how much intimacy they have lost breaks overs him like a freezing wave. He watches in silence, swallowing hard every few seconds, while Zach steps into his jeans, then shoves his arms into the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Once his fingers start working on the buttons, Chris realizes he’s running out of time. In a second, Zach is going to walk away from him yet again.

“What do you want from me?” he asks, not bothering to hide the desperation in his voice. “What do I have to do so that we can be in the same place at the same time for more than a couple minutes without it being weird?”

“I don’t want anything from you, Chris,” Zach says wearily. 

“Yeah, well, I want something from you!”

Chris is angry all of a sudden—he’s practically vibrating with it. He’s so tired of begging for scraps from Zach’s table. They can’t live like this, not much longer. It’s eating at Chris, chipping away at what little sanity he has left, and he doesn’t feel like rolling over and taking it anymore. They are going to have this out, even if he has to follow Zach all the way to the cabin and yell at his back and make a scene.

Something seems to come over Zach. He abandons his buttons and stalks toward Chris, his expression dark and dangerous. Chris backs up instinctively, until his back hits a tree trunk, but Zach keeps on coming, right up into his space. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Zach was little more than a bag of bones, but when Chris plants a hand on his bare chest, all he feels is lean, powerful muscle. They haven’t been close like this, face to face, in a long time, but everything is just the way Chris remembers it—the shadows Zach eyelashes cast on his skin, the perfect dust of stubble across his jaw, the way his eyes are lighter up close, and warmer too, even when they are flashing with anger. 

“And what is it you want from me, hmm?” Zach asks him, his voice so low it barely sounds human. Chris’s heart starts racing, and he tries to shove Zach away, but it doesn’t work, his heart isn’t really in it.

“Zach,” he says helplessly.

Zach’s hand comes up and curls around the side of Chris’s neck. His thumb slides gently across his jaw, but Chris doesn’t trust it. He can’t quite place the look in Zach’s eyes right now. It’s unsettling.

“Is this what you want from me?” Zach rumbles. He leans in and noses along Chris’s cheekbone, his breath scorching in contrast to the cool night air. In spite of himself, Chris tilts his head back, baring his neck in reflexive submission. If it looks like a jungle cat and walks like a jungle cat, treat it like a jungle cat. Zach bites him just under his jaw, quick and sharp, and then follows it with a hot swipe of his tongue. The sound that comes out of Chris’s mouth might be a warning or might be encouragement, but it definitely isn’t “stop”.

“Answer me, Chris,” Zach says, but Chris doesn’t even remember the question anymore. Zach helps him out. “This is what you want, right? You want to make me admit I still want you.”

What? No. That’s not right. But Zach’s fingers are sliding down Chris’s stomach and flicking open the button of his fly, and all Chris’s thoughts get stuck in quicksand.

“Zach, no,” says his mouth, but his body says something else, his hips pushing against Zach’s hand of their own accord and his fingers curling around the open flap of Zach’s shirt to keep him close. 

Zach hushes him. His fingers slide into Chris’s underwear, his thumb rough on the head of his cock before he wraps him in his fist. It’s familiar, but it’s not. Chris would know the touch of Zach’s hand anywhere, but it’s been so fucking long. All he can think about is how this should be happening a different way, not because Zach is trying to prove God knows what kind of point. But if this is all Zach is willing to give him, he should just take it.

“Mmm, I do miss this though,” Zach says in his ear, his voice a mean little growl that doesn’t seem to match the words coming out of his mouth. “This part was always good, wasn’t it?”

 _Was_. The word embeds itself in his skull like shrapnel, making him gasp in pain. He jerks his head back, thunking it against the rough bark behind him, and tries to meet Zach’s eyes. Zach is looking down though, tugging Chris’s underwear away with one hand so he can pull him out of his jeans and get a better angle, a better grip. Chris groans and bucks up through his fist, and finally Zach looks up, grinning and triumphant. 

“Yeah, baby, that’s it,” he murmurs. “I knew it. Knew this was what you needed.”

Chris shakes his head frantically, paws at Zach’s chest and then slides his hand up to the back of his neck to yank him in, crushing their mouths together. It’s rough, bruising—Chris thinks he tastes copper, but he doesn’t care. He opens up for Zach’s tongue and moans. Shame wells up in him at his own reaction, but it’s overshadowed by his need for Zach to keep touching him, for this to last forever. 

“God, Chris,” Zach sighs, feeding the words directly onto Chris’s tongue. Finally, finally he sounds more like the Zach that Chris remembers, from when they were in the love and the world was simple. 

“Want to touch you,” Chris gasps, pushing his fingers up under Zach’s shirt and skating them across his stomach.

“Yes.” It’s more of a hiss than a word, but it’s permission, and that’s all that matters. Chris tears into Zach’s fly and then drags the waistband of his underwear down far enough that his cock springs free. Relief floods him when he gets his fingers around it, muscle memory telling him exactly how tight to grip, how fast to move. This isn’t everything he wants, but it’s something. It’s good enough for now. 

Zach seems to be crumbling. His ferocity is fading into something else, something Chris can’t quite put his finger on right now, with sex fogging his brain. The teeth that scrape along the cords of his neck are gentler somehow, and Zach’s breathing is more ragged than it should be. His fingers sneak up under Chris’s shirt, rubbing across his right nipple before sliding over, finding the edge of the bandage and then crawling across it until his palm is resting gently over Chris’s bullet wound. Zach doesn’t press, doesn’t force him to feel it, but still Chris is as aware of that hand as he is of the one on his dick. 

Their forearms are sliding against each other, and the head of Zach’s cock is painting a wet spot on Chris’s lower stomach, the tugs of his hand made shallow by the closeness of their bodies. The horrible feeling in Chris’s chest hasn’t gone away, but it’s so twisted up in the pleasure Zach is pulling out of him that he barely feels it anymore. Or maybe he does feel it, but by some strange alchemy, Zach has turned it into something he can’t imagine refusing. Somewhere off in the future, there will be a Chris who regrets this, who is sick with the shame of it, but this Chris, here and now, doesn’t care. 

He wrestles open the buttons of Zach’s shirt with his free hand and then runs his palm up Zach’s stomach and tangles his fingers in the soft patch of hair on his chest. His skin is so familiar. Someone could line up half the world’s men in front of Chris and blindfold him and he’d be able to find Zach just by touch.

“I miss you,” he whispers. He hopes Zach doesn’t hear it over the sound of their labored breathing, but the strangled sound that Zach muffles against his neck says otherwise.

“Shut up,” he says. His fingers dig into Chris’s shoulder until the pain is white hot. “Shut up, shut up.”

“Zach, please.” 

A sob escapes the prison of Zach’s clenched teeth. His knocks Chris’s hand out of the way and grips them both, and Chris lets him, doesn’t give a fuck that they are devolving into clumsy rutting. It’s more appropriate for the time and place anyway, and for Chris’s state of mind. 

“Why can’t you just…” Zach doesn’t finish the question. His fingers are stroking along the edge of Chris’s bandage again now, so gently it makes Chris want to squirm away. He drops his head to Chris’s shoulder, rolling his forehead against his collarbone. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

Chris cries out, agony mixing with pleasure as he spills over Zach’s hand, his bare stomach. Zach lifts his head and smears their mouths together one more time, pushing Chris’s shirt up and out of the way just in time to shudder through his release, groaning and biting at Chris’s lips.

Afterward, Chris doesn’t dare move. He squeezes his eyes shut as Zach rests their foreheads together, their labored breaths warming his face. The rough bark of the tree he’s leaning against bites into his back, but he doesn’t care. In a moment, this spell will be broken, and Chris isn’t going to be the one to break it.

He keeps his eyes shut when Zach does finally straighten up and move away. Footsteps travel down the bank, then come close again, and then the soft towel swipes across Chris’s stomach, cleaning away the mess. Only once Zach has tugged his shirt back into place for him does Chris open his eyes, but he has to stare past him at the purling water for a moment. He’s afraid to look at his face. 

When he does look, Zach won’t meet his eyes anyway. His gaze is fixed on Chris’s shoulder, like he’s trying to see through his shirt and the bandages to the wound beneath, and his expression is inscrutable. A muscle in his jaw keeps jumping. 

Chris tries to touch him again, but the movement seems to bring Zach back to himself all at once. He sucks in a sharp breath through his nose and steps back out of reach, his expression melting into something twisted and ugly. Regretful. Chris feels like he’s been shot a second time.

“Next time, Chris.” Zach twists the towel in his hands until the fabric groans and his knuckles are white. He still won’t look at Chris. “Next time you’re in trouble, you run.”

“Zach, I—”

Finally, Zach looks up. His eyes are solid black in the growing darkness. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t try to be the hero again. I can’t—”

“Okay.” Chris will say anything Zach wants, promise him anything he wants, if it has a chance of making things right between them. “Okay, I will. I promise.”

He stretches out his hand again, expecting Zach to come close now, kiss him once more, twice more, forever. Zach looks down at his outstretched palm, and he rocks forward onto the balls of his feet like he’s going to take that step, but when he reaches out, it’s to knock Chris’s hand away so he can brush past him. Shock breaks over Chris like ice water filling his lungs. A couple minutes ago, Zach was kissing him, and now he’s walking away.

He strains to listen to Zach’s footsteps, but he only hears half a dozen before they fade away, drowned out by the rush of the river.

\----

_”Hey, let’s go out,” Zach says, flopping down on the couch next to Chris and resting his chin on his shoulder. “I’m bored.”_

_Chris is split evenly down the middle—fondness and irritation in equal measures. Zach does this to him all the time now, makes him feel completely contradictory things._

_“We went out last night, Zach.” He tries not to sound too whiny, but it’s difficult. His book has sucked him in. “I was looking forward to having a quiet night in.”_

_Zach straightens up, his mouth twisted into a disappointed moue. “We have lots of quiet nights in.”_

_“We have lots of not-so-quiet nights out.” Chris puts the bookmark back in his book though. He figures he better give this conversation his full attention, or else Zach is going to hold it against him, remind him of it every chance he gets over the next couple weeks._ You never pay attention to me, Chris. _Hyperbole is his true medium._

_“Please?” Zach says, exaggerating his pout and drawing coaxing circles on Chris’s forearm with his fingertips. “Pretty please?”_

_It’s not real begging. It’s ironic begging, which is tantamount to a threat when coming from Zach. Chris could put his foot down and just deal with a day or two of fallout, but that would be even more tiring than just giving in and going out for a little bit._

_“Can we be back here by midnight?” he asks, looking at his watch. It’s 8:00 now, will be 9:00 by the time they get ready. Three hours is fair, right? Then maybe he can get some more reading in before bed. And maybe Zach won’t try to drag him out of the house again for a few days._

_Zach looks a little put-out at the idea of having a curfew, but he doesn’t bother to argue. He leans in and places a smacking kiss on Chris’s mouth. It’s reward more than it is affection, which saps Chris’s ability to enjoy it. The spark he has always felt for Zach is still there, always waiting to be fanned into flame again, but Chris hasn’t tended it in a long time. This is what marriage is, after all. The honeymoon stage fades eventually, and then you are left with this—negotiation and compromise and touch-as-reward. If Chris let himself think about it too hard, he’d probably be depressed._

_“You should wear that gray button-down I bought you,” Zach says as he hauls himself up off the couch._

_“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Chris asks, even though he already knows. They have had many an argument about the fact that Chris firmly believes a t-shirt and jeans is an appropriate costume for most venues. They live in California, for fuck’s sake. Everyone dresses down._

_Zach raises his eyebrows at him, looking him up and down. He lets the silence drag out a moment, like he’s waiting for Chris to apologize for saying such a thing, but Chris just stares at him and waits._

_“Wear the gray shirt,” Zach says again, with finality this time. “It looks so good on you.”_

_Not just good, but_ so _good. Chris hates himself for the reflexive flutter of his heart, the flush of pleasure that rises into his cheeks. Some things never change. Praise from Zach still feels like manna from heaven. He’ll tug at the uncomfortable collar all night and probably hate Zach for it, but he’s going to wear the fucking gray shirt._

_With a sigh, he gets to his feet and makes to follow Zach into the bedroom. “Fine, fine.”_

_Zach stops him though, one hand finding the crook of his elbow. When he smiles at him, it’s real, and when he kisses him, that’s real too—not reward this time but genuine tenderness. It melts away most of his resentment. Maybe Zach isn’t trying to be manipulative after all. He has Chris wrapped around his little finger anyway—always has._

\----

As the days get colder, they all spend more and more time inside. Rather than congregating in the green space at the center of the campground, they gather in the kitchen, where the wood-burning stove puts off enough heat to keep them all cozy. Naomi has a semi-permanent spot in the corner, where she darns socks and sews patches into ripped jeans. Kyle has been chopping small trees for firewood, and there is a tidy pile of logs next to the door—not enough for the whole winter, but a good start.

Today, the kitchen doubles as an exam room. Henry holds the lantern over Chris’s left shoulder while Harmony carefully peels the gauze pads away from Chris’s shoulder.

“Hmm.” 

It’s a good thing Chris knows by now that Harmony always sounds concerned, even when it’s good news, or else the tone of that hum would alarm him. “What’s the verdict, doc?”

“It’s healing up nicely,” she says. “Minimal redness. I don’t think we need to wrap it up again.” Her fingers feel around the edges of the wound, which is somehow both numb and tender at once, fresh scar tissue over sore flesh. 

“Lift your arm,” she prompts him, and Chris does it, raising his elbow to the level of his shoulder. He grimaces, but it’s more from stiffness than actual discomfort.

“Can I go back to work now?” he asks her.

“Slowly.” Harmony reaches to the table behind her for some antiseptic cream, then prompts him to lean forward with a tap on the shoulder. “Just don’t overdo it. I mean it. If you open this up again, I’m putting you back on bed rest.”

Chris puts his forearms on his knees and stares at the floor, biting down on his bottom lip while Harmony dabs cream onto the exit wound on his back. The door opens, and two sets of feet move into his field of vision—Zach’s and Janine’s. 

“How is it looking?” Zach asks. When Chris lifts his head, Zach is looking not at him but at Harmony. He can’t seem to let his eyes land on Chris’s wound for very long.

“He’ll be fine,” Harmony says. “Just like I told you the last ten times you asked.”

Chris’s heart flutters a little at the thought of Zach worrying about him, but no matter how hard he stares at the side of his face, he can’t get Zach to look at him. Things have been just as tense as usual between them since the episode by the river. The whole ordeal plays over and over in Chris’s head at night—the expression on Zach’s face, the way his fingers kept skimming the bandage and then digging onto Chris’s skin, as if to confirm he was really alive. Chris wants to talk about it so badly, but he’s also feeling stubborn, and hurt that Zach would just walk away from him yet again. He wishes that he could regret it or blame Zach for taking advantage of him, but every time he tries to summon back the queasy feeling he got when Zach first pinned him to the tree, it’s overshadowed by the memory of the way Zach said his name, the way his hands shook as he cleaned Chris up.

He wants to be angry, but there is still just enough reason to hope. 

“Harmony says I’m good to start working again,” Chris says, still watching Zach.

“A _little_ bit,” Harmony admonishes. She taps him on the shoulder again, indicating that he can sit up straight. 

“Anyway, I want to start fixing up the cabin.” He takes his shirt out of Harmony’s hand and pulls it back on slowly, hoping that might get Zach to look at him. He’s in luck. It does. “Do you think you could help me?”

It’s a job that he was planning on doing with Manny—his and Zach’s cabin first and then everyone else’s—but plans are changing now. The cold weather is coming, along with shorter days, and Chris can’t do it alone. Not with a bum shoulder.

“I…” It’s obvious that Zach wants to come up with an excuse, but with an audience, he doesn’t have an easy out. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah. I guess. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my animal duties.”

“Animal duties will be less demanding for a while anyway.” Henry sets the lantern down on the table where Harmony is putting all her medical supplies away. He puts his hands on his hips and looks back and forth between Chris and Zach. “We aren’t milking the goats right now, since they’ve been bred.”

So that settles it then. Zach is stuck. Chris has to swallow down his desire to grin in triumph. “Awesome. We can start after the morning feeding tomorrow then. Right?”

The corner of Zach’s mouth twitches a little, like he’s fighting a grin, like he is fighting the urge to give Chris credit for being so conniving. 

“Alright,” he says. “Sounds good.”

“Good.” Chris stands up from the chair and rolls his shoulder in a slow circle, getting used to having some range of motion back, without the pull of tape and gauze against his skin. Then, he heads for the door. He doesn’t have anywhere pressing to be, but he doesn’t want to stick around long enough to give Zach a reason to change his mind.

“Just remember that you need to take it easy!” Harmony calls after his retreating back. Just as he puts his hand on the doorknob, he hears Zach speak to her, low enough that he probably doesn’t intend Chris to hear.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”


	6. Chapter 6

Chris realizes right away that he is being too ambitious jumping right back into construction, but he doesn’t plan on giving up the extra time with Zach regardless. Kyle and Janine have to help them carry the large window panes from the supply cabin, because Chris can only bear weight with his right hand, and once they are all set up, Zach is the one saddled with prying nails out of the existing boards of the cabin, while Chris cuts lumber to size for the new window frames. He is lucky he still can use his dominant arm, which means he can use the saw in short bursts, but overall he still feels a bit useless and a lot sore.

Before they came to The Camp, Chris could count on one hand the number of times he saw Zach do physical labor. He was never much for helping out in the garden, and even something as simple as moving furniture around would get him moaning and groaning. Now though, he works like a machine. It’s almost like he has something to prove, or something to escape from. He pries boards off the sides of the cabin with a vengeance, tosses them down in the dirt one by one until a mountain is growing at his feet. Chris can’t help but look up a little too often to watch him wipe sweat off his brow with the back of his forearm or shake damp strands of hair out of his face. It is nearly November now, and even the daylight hours are chilly, but hard work keeps them more than warm enough.

They don’t talk all that much. It’s strange at first, because even when things were bad between them, Chris could always count on Zach to have plenty to say. But at the same time, it’s not surprising. Talking could be dangerous for them right now. There is so much hanging unsaid over their heads, and even Chris, who itches to get it all out in the open and over with, is afraid of what might come out after they both have their mouths open for long enough. They haven’t discussed what happened by the river. They haven’t talked about how they feel about the current state of things, of their lives, of the world. They haven’t talked about what to do with all the tattered scraps of a failed marriage that are still clinging to them. 

After the first couple hours though, the silence becomes comfortable, like a kind of camaraderie in itself. It is broken only by the occasional mumbled, “Hand me a couple nails,” or “Where’s the measuring tape?” Working together is low pressure, a way to coexist without making themselves too vulnerable.

By the end of the first day, they have one wall done, the one tiny window replaced by two large picture windows that reach almost from floor to ceiling. They walk inside to check their handiwork, and Chris feels almost giddy about how much natural light comes in now, making the cabin feel less like a depressing cave, even at this hour, when the sun is going down.

“We’ll have to hang curtains, I guess.” He walks right up to one of the windows and puts his hands in the small of his back, looking out at the rest of the cabins in their little circle. One of them is occupied by Naomi and Janine, and they probably don’t want to be staring in at Chris and Zach all the time.

“Mmhmm.” Zach’s voice comes to him from a measured, safe distance away. “This was a good idea. We’ll definitely conserve more candles.”

Chris flushes with pride at the praise, minor though it is. He turns to shoot Zach a shy smile over his shoulder, and Zach’s mouth quirks a little bit in return. The nice moment lasts a couple beats before Zach seems to come back to himself, his expression shuttering. 

“I’m going to go get cleaned up,” he says. 

Chris nods, then watches until he walks out the door.

Day two starts out a little more companionable. Chris has blisters forming on his palm from pushing the saw most of the day, so Zach makes him wear the one pair of work gloves they have to share. They take turns prying apart the cabin wall this time, Chris taking care not to tire out his shoulder, and Zach actually makes feeble attempts to keep up a stream of small talk. He talks about the animals. He tells Chris that he’s been taking riding lessons from Susan, and that the horse they wrangled the day Manny was killed has proved to be a smooth and easy ride.

“What did you guys decide to call him?” Chris asks.

“Hero,” Zach says. He doesn’t look at Chris when he says it, turning away instead to set another freshly cut plank on the pile behind him. “He didn’t leave Manny, you know? He just stood there with him until we got back. It seemed appropriate.”

Chris stares through the gaping hole in the wall in front of them for several moments, then nods to himself. “I like it.”

“We should go for a ride together at some point.” The suggestion comes as such a shock to Chris that he almost drops the hammer in his hand, but when he looks over at Zach, Zach is looking back at him impassively. “The weather is going to get bad soon, and…I don’t know. It’s the one enjoyable thing about being out here. The scenery.”

With his heart thudding in his chest, Chris forces himself to grin. “The one enjoyable thing? I don’t know about that.”

Zach studies him for a moment like he’s trying to decide whether to take the bait, then finally caves. “Well, what else?” he asks as he sets another piece of lumber across the sawhorses. “The awesome food?”

Chris chuckles at that. “It’s not so bad actually.” Yeah, he still misses pasta and Cheez-its and red meat, but overall their diet is growing on him, thanks in large part to Vera’s cooking, which might involve black magic. “I guess I just meant that…we’re lucky. Comparatively. To me, that’s the takeaway from…you know, Manny and everything. We could be trying to live in the city right now and be in constant danger, but…we’re not. We’re here. And we’re building something—something real.”

Zach doesn’t look like he was prepared for such an impassioned speech, and Chris is a little surprised himself. But now that the words are out there, he knows how true they are.

With a sigh, Zach sets the saw down and grips the edge of the board, looking down at his own hands rather than meeting Chris’s eyes. Chris bites down hard on his tongue to keep from being the one to break the silence, because he knows if he does, he could make Zach second-guess whatever it is he’s about to say. Finally, Zach sighs again and looks up.

“I should…say thank you.” 

Chris is taken aback. He lets his hand, which was poised to shove the claw end of the hammer underneath another board, fall limply back to his side. “What?”

Zach swallows hard and shifts his gaze away like he’s considering bolting instead. But he doesn’t. “I want to thank you for taking care of me. And getting us here. I just…never did it before, so I’m doing it now.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Chris says. “What was I going to do, just leave you?”

Zach stares at him hard for a moment, then drops his head. “No, I guess not. But…still. Thank you.”

Chris nods and shrugs and rubs the back of his neck, scuffing his boots in the dirt. As much as he has been wishing for some scrap of gratitude from Zach, now that he has it, he has no clue what to do with it. It doesn’t taste as sweet as he thought it would. It doesn’t fill the aching hole inside him. 

He is happy enough to leave the conversation there, so it’s a relief when Zach immediately picks up the saw again, his hair falling into his face and obscuring his expression as he gets back to work. Chris makes himself turn away again, focuses on the burning in his muscles instead of the burning in his chest. 

After a brief break for dinner with the group, they finish up the second wall just in time for it to get too dark to see, with stars winking into view against the light purple sky. Wearily, they trundle up the path to the supply cabin to put up the tools and the sawhorses, then wander back by the light of the rising moon. It is dark inside their cabin, but not pitch black anymore. Chris pauses next to his bed to look out into the trees and smiles to himself.

Zach comes up next to him, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels. “We definitely need to get some curtains. I’m not sure I like the view all that much at night.”

“What, scared a bear is going to watch you sleeping?” Chris teases cautiously.

“You joke, but there _are_ actually bears up here, you know.”

“Yeah, but they have better things to do than look in the windows at you.” Zach shoots him an ineffective glare. “Alright, we’ll hang curtain rods tomorrow.”

And after that they can start on Naomi and Janine’s cabin. And after that, Kyle and Tristan’s. And so on and so forth. Chris can’t help but smile a little at the thought that he and Zach are going to be spending most of their days together for a while, after so many weeks of giving each other a wide berth. 

Zach has something else to say to him, Chris can tell. This moment keeps happening to them, over and over again—the pregnant silence where Zach is working himself up to something and Chris instinctively fears what’s coming. 

“Is there water in the shower?” Zach says at last. Chris lets relief wash over him. 

“Finally too cold for you to be taking dips in the river, huh?”

Zach shrugs. “It’s been too cold for a while. I’ve just been stubborn.”

The admission comes with a sheepish smile, and it’s like looking through a window to the past. Chris has to hold his breath for a moment, because he’s afraid he’ll make Zach crawl back into his shell too soon. Zach is looking at him expectantly though, so he forces himself to nod.

“Yeah. Yeah, there’s water in there.”

“Good.” Zach turns to gather up his clothes and head for the door.

“Hey, Zach?” Zach turns back toward him and raises his eyebrows in silent question. Chris lets his eyes wander over his dark face, and then he smiles. “Watch out for the bears.”

Zach rolls his eyes, but there is just a hint of a smile on his face as he turns away.

\----

_”Where are you?” Chris presses the phone harder to his ear, like that will help him distinguish Zach’s voice from all the other noise on the other end of the line—the thump of base, the chatter of voices, the high-pitched shrieks of feminine laughter._

_“Sorry.” Zach’s voice sounds distant and garbled amid all the noise. “Sorry, sorry. One sec.”_

_Chris listens to the generic din of the club for a couple minutes. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that he’s there with Zach, Zach’s hand pressed to the small of his back, keeping him grounded as they move through the press of strange bodies, out the side door and into the alley for a smoke. As if on cue, the noise fades away to jarring silence, indicating that Zach has finally stepped outside._

_“Sorry, babe.” He sounds out of breath, but in a good way, like he’s been dancing and yelling and maybe singing a little. “What’s up?”_

_“Where are you?” Chris asks again. “I thought you were going to call me after you were done for the day.”_

_“We decided to go out.” There’s an obvious shrug in Zach’s voice. “You remember that club around the corner from the hotel we stayed at? With the purple bathrooms?”_

_Chris has a flash of stumbling through a swinging door, laughing so hard he’s crying at a joke he can’t even remember anymore and probably wasn’t funny anyway, clinging to Zach to keep from falling down. Even the urinals were painted an obnoxious shade of lavender. He took the one immediately next to Zach, etiquette be damned, and their forearms brushed as they fumbled with their flies. He remembers looking at Zach’s hand where it was pressed to the wall, studying the hair on the back of his knuckles. It seemed imperative at the time that he not look any lower than that. They giggled at nothing the whole time they were emptying their bladders, then returned to the dance floor arm-in-arm._

_He doesn’t like thinking of Zach being there, having that much fun, with anyone else._

_“Sorry,” Zach is saying in his ear yet again. “I was going to call you when I got back to the hotel.”_

_“Yeah, no, that’s fine.” Chris looks at the clock for the umpteenth time, but for some reason he has lost the ability to do basic addition. How many hours ahead is Berlin? “I didn’t mean to interrupt the fun or anything. I just got worried when you didn’t check in.”_

_“I’m sorry, Chris.”_

_The word ‘sorry’ doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore. Why is Zach apologizing so much? Is over-apologizing a sign of guilt? Is Chris losing his goddamn mind? He misses Zach too much, hates waking up in bed alone, hates cooking for one. It’s only a couple weeks, and then he’ll be able to fly out to spend some time with him before he has to go do some movie promotion in New York, but fuck, this is hard._

_“You are having fun right?” Chris asks. The question is a trap and he hates himself for asking it._

_“Yeah, so much fun.” Of course Zach would refuse to play the game. But then he adds, “I can’t wait until you get here. I found so many new places I want to take you. God, do we have enough money to buy a summer home here?”_

_That surprises a laugh out of Chris. He drags a hand down his face and gives in to the tug at his heart. “Honey, we have enough money to buy ten summer homes there. If you see something you like, snatch it up.”_

_Zach lets out a delighted little giggle that makes Chris wish so badly he was there to kiss him. “Not without you. But we can look when you get here maybe.”_

_Just like that, Chris forgets to be annoyed with him—that he is having a blast without him, that he forgot to call. He never has been able to stay mad at him for long, and it’s practically impossible when met with a rare moment of Zach Enthusiasm, coupled with a much-needed reminder that they are a team._

_“That sounds great.” Chris smiles a real smile and turns his head to look out the window, imagining the span of miles between them shrinking down to nothing. “I’ll let you get back to it then. At least text me before you go to bed, okay?”_

_“I’ll call you.” It sounds like Zach is smiling too. “But I might be drunk. Promise not to judge.”_

_“I promise,” Chris laughs. Then, quieter, he adds, “I love you.”_

_Zach breathes out like he’s exhaling a satisfying lungful of smoke. “Love you too, babe.”_

\----

One of the chickens gets sacrificed for their Thanksgiving meal. They can’t afford to be _too_ lavish, but they can afford that much. Zach and Naomi lament together about who it is that’s going to wring the poor thing’s neck, but before they even finish their fretting, Vera is already heading into the kitchen with the carcass slung over her shoulder. Chris laughs at their stunned and slightly queasy faces, but inside he’s thinking about Zach’s on-again, off-again veganism and wonders if he’s wishing for tofurkey or if he’s stopped caring about such things.

Aside from the chicken, they have mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, sautéed kale, and for dessert, peach pie—not pumpkin, they have no pumpkin. The peaches are from a can, but no one cares. It’s the most any of them have eaten in months, not to mention the first meat they’ve had in just as long. That alone puts it on par with some of the best meals Chris has ever had in his life. There are a few murmurs about the lack of traditional fare like stuffing and cranberries, but mostly everyone is too busy tucking in to do much complaining. 

Though the weather has definitely turned colder, and the crisp chill of impending winter hangs over their heads, they have chosen to eat outside, pressed shoulder to shoulder at one of the picnic tables. They barely all fit, but they need to snuggle together for warmth anyway. Even after plates are clean, after all their faces are red from the cold, no one seems to want to move to get up and go back inside, to break the spell that their little celebration has cast on all of them. Chris feels like he is resisting the need to spend more time inside, and he wonders if the others feel the same. Though a couple months ago, the trees felt suffocating, now there is a quiet comfort about them. Stepping out the front door of the cabin is like walking into an ancient cathedral. Chris is not looking forward to the long months ahead of them where it will be smarter to stay in as much as possible.

“We’re good on food, right?” Kyle asks as he looks around at all the empty plates. He worries a lot, like Chris, but unlike Chris, he doesn’t have anything to temper that anxiety. In this moment, with Zach pressed warm against him from shoulder to thigh, and with his belly pleasantly stuffed, Chris feels content for the first time in a while.

“For the winter, you mean?” He blows into his hands, then looks over at Susan and Vera, who are sitting together at the other end of the table with Oliver squished between them to keep him warm. “Ladies? Are we going to starve to death because we had one good meal?”

They roll their eyes in tandem, and quiet laughter ripples across the table. 

“No, but you should wrap up that tangerine tree of yours,” Susan says to him. She never agreed he should plant it. Manny was the one who brought the sapling to him, probably recognizing Chris’s need to please Zach at all costs. Chris swallows down on a pang of loss and forces a grin.

“Those things are hardier than you think.” He presses fractionally closer to Zach. “They can survive a freeze or two.”

“Still, she’s right,” Zach chimes in. “We should cover it, before the first snow comes.”

“Alright, alright,” Chris concedes, as if he wasn’t already planning on it. The truth is, he’s concerned about the garden. He has never had to deal with growing food in freezing temperatures before, and he is already worried about how much of it will come back in the spring. They have canned as many fruits and veggies as they can spare, and there are carrots and kale and potatoes growing inside the kitchen now, but food is still a concern. Goat’s milk and cheese will be missing until the spring. They almost never get meat and no red meat at all. Kyle’s worry might be warranted after all.

“Maybe we should start hunting,” Henry suggests. “There are deer around, right? Are turkeys native to California?”

“Hunt with what?” Janine leans forward, elbows bracketing her empty plate. “Bows and arrows? We need to save the bullets for the guns. We might need them for…other reasons.”

Everyone murmurs their agreement, but no one seems to have any more suggestions. This is their main problem right now. They have so many puzzles that they need to find solutions to eventually, but they keep putting off the part where they actually come up with the solutions. The other day, Naomi asked whether they thought they’d ever get electricity back, and she was met with blank stares and shrugs. One thing at a time. They need to get through the winter first, and then they can talk about moving forward. Survival before innovation.

Chris privately wonders if they even _need_ to innovate. Maybe the universe is sending them all a signal that it’s time to get back to the basics. Maybe their hubris as a human race is what brought them here. The bigger you are, the harder you fall.

“If you think any harder, you’re going to burn a hole through the table.” It’s Zach’s voice, speaking low in his ear. Chris jolts out of his reverie and turns toward him, a reflexive smile on his face. 

“Sorry, just—”

“Just trying to figure out how to save the world again, huh?”

Chris doesn’t know where Zach got this idea that he wants to be a hero. The only person he ever wanted to save is sitting right next to him. Now that he has done that, all he wants to do is make sure Zach stays alive long enough to die of old age, in his sleep, in the middle of a wonderful dream. If he has to kill everyone else here to make that happen, he’s pretty sure he would. If he had to burn the world to the ground to make it happen, he would. That doesn’t make him a hero at all. Depending on who’s telling the story, it might make him the villain.

But for now, he isn’t thinking about that. For now, there are no immediate concerns, no tension to mitigate, no wounds to lick. He can feel Zach’s warmth seeping into him, and he slumps shamelessly against him, propping his chin in his hand and looking sideways at him.

“Just enjoying this moment actually,” he says, loud enough so it’s not only Zach who can hear him. “I’m full of good food, and, at least for now, there’s no danger. I’m just…” 

He trails off for a moment, then shrugs, looking around the table. He sees red cheeks and runny noses, a group of people that gets under his skin sometimes but that has made an unspoken agreement to have each other’s backs in the most difficult of times. 

“I’m thankful,” he says, and smiles.

\----

_Chris gets exhausted by degrees rather than all at once. By the time he realizes things are bad, he has a feeling they have been that way for a while—too long to be easily set right again._

_Zach has always required much of him. It’s the reason Chris fell in love with him in the first place. The man is a constant challenge, a dare to do everything better. He picks things apart to their smallest components and shines a light on them, puts them under a microscope, and Chris is no exception to that rule._

_“Are you sure you want to sign on for possibly three more Wonder Woman movies?”_

_No, Chris isn’t, but sometimes he gets tired of wrestling with every decision for weeks. Sometimes he just wants to take a leap of faith, like he did with Star Trek. That worked out well, so why shouldn’t this work out too? He had fun filming the last one. He enjoys the cast. So why not?_

_Chris is needy too—he knows he is—but it’s in different ways than Zach. He wants to be in the same room with him whenever possible. He wants his physical presence, and to know that he would rather be with him than anywhere else. But Zach’s neediness is a burden on Chris’s mind. It’s a grasping need to know all of his thoughts, even the most private ones. It’s a demand for his opinions to be validated, even when they make no sense to Chris. Zach wants a complete, all-access pass to Chris’s psyche, and that is completely unsustainable._

_“Can’t I just make this one decision on my own, Zach?” He doesn’t mean to snap, but that’s what happens. His voice is brittle and foreign. And that’s the moment he realizes how tired he is, how impossibly hard this is on him. He is chopping vegetables for dinner, and all he wants to hear is the thunk of the knife against the cutting board, not Zach’s voice. “Can you just trust that I know better than you what I want for my career?”_

_When he looks up, there is something odd in Zach’s expression. It’s not quite hurt, and it’s not quite anger. He looks confused, in fact—like Chris just spoke to him in a different language._

_“I am not saying I know better than you what you want from your career,” he says slowly. He picks up one of the onions sitting on the counter and starts to shred the skin off of it, picking it apart in little strips and placing them down on the counter. “I just thought you might want to talk about it.”_

_“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t.” Except he can already feel the regret welling up inside him. But it’s too late to turn back now. “I know you think I should be doing fucking arthouse fare now, but—”_

_“I don’t think that at all,” Zach interrupts. “I think you should be doing what makes you happy.”_

_Chris swipes a pile of chopped carrots off to the side and reaches for a bell pepper. He stares at his own hands rather than looking at Zach’s face again, because he thinks he’ll lose his nerve if he does. Or he’ll realize that whatever it is that’s making him lash out at Zach is really in his own head. Already he has a niggling little suspicion that it could be his own feelings of inadequacy that are making him want to keep Zach at arm’s length right now. As long as they have known each other, and even after a year of marriage, he still fears that at some point Zach will wake up and realize he is out of Chris's league. He really wants someone a little funnier, a little more charming, a lot more fun to be around._

_It’s hard and Chris is tired and he’s worried it will always be hard and he’ll always be tired._

_“I don’t know what’s going to make me happy.” He still sounds testy, despite the fact that he’s trying not to be now. When he slices into the pepper, he barely misses his finger. “I need to figure that out, and you can’t help me do that.”_

_Zach doesn’t say anything. He sets the peeled onion down and then sweeps the pile of papery skin off the counter and into his palm, and Chris half-turns to watch him go over to the trash can, afraid he might just keep right on walking, all the way out of the room. But Zach turns back to him, and suddenly he looks tired. He presses his fingers into his eyes._

_“Just…let me know if you do want to talk about it, okay?”_

_Chris nods, guilt twisting in his gut. There has to be a better way than this—this constant push and pull._ What are you thinking? _and_ Stay in with me tonight _. They’ll get back on the same page. Chris believes they will—has to believe it._

_He puts the knife down and crosses the room to take Zach’s face in his hands and kiss him soundly. Zach sighs and melts into it, his palms curling around Chris’s hips. At least they have this. At least they always have this._

\----

Chris picks the best possible day to break out his guitar. He’s sitting by the outdoor fire pit, keeping one eye on the big iron pot that Susan is boiling all their socks in, and strumming through a few chords to keep himself occupied, when the first soft white snowflake drifts down and lands on the back of his hand. With a delighted giggle, he turns his face up to the circle of gray sky, then blinks when a second snowflake lands on his eyelashes. It’s the first week of December, and here comes their first snow.

Having spent all his life in Los Angeles, Chris is even more a stranger to snow than he is to rain. It’s never snowed in LA in his lifetime, so he has only glimpsed true winter weather when he happened to be traveling somewhere at the right time, which wasn’t often enough for the shine to wear off of it. Now, he greets the snow with a sort of childlike wonder, looking up at the sky for several minutes before staring off toward the lodge and watching the flurries dance across his field of vision. As the moments tick by, the others start to drift over. Oliver bursts out of the kitchen door with a gleeful giggle, Vera hot on his heels. Henry comes up the path from the direction of the barn, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders shrugged up to his red ears. Janine and Naomi show up arm-in-arm, with Zach trailing after them, the snowflakes standing out against his dark hair, giving him a funny little halo. Skunk trots after him, his tongue poking out of his mouth like he’s trying to catch the snow. Eventually they are all there, sitting close to the fire, watching as the snow falls around them.

The tune comes to Chris’s fingers unbidden. He would have expected it to be a Christmas carol that came to him at a time like this—Let it Snow or Walking in a Winter Wonderland—but instead it’s Simon and Garfunkel that pops into his head. He plucks out the opening riff at half speed, then looks up at Zach, knows somehow that he’ll be looking back and that he’ll recognize it immediately. Sure enough, Zach is smiling, and he mouths the words at him silently: _Time, time, time, see what’s become of me._

“Oh God, please sing,” Naomi coos when she notices the exchange. She rubs her gloved hands together and then tucks them into her armpits, grinning. “We could all use a little music.”

Chris would be a liar if he said he doesn’t like to perform, but here and now, he’s suddenly shy. Not because of the rest of the people gathered around the fire, but because of Zach, who is still holding his gaze, his eyes warm against the background of cold gray and white. But Naomi is right—they could all use some music, and now seems like the perfect time for it, like the earth is setting the stage.

For the first line, he’s looking down at the dirt, at the snowflakes settling near the fire only to melt away immediately. His voice sounds tremulous and rusty to his own ears, and somehow too loud in contrast with the quiet that has accompanied the snowfall. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see fingers tapping on knees, toes scratching at the dirt, and he lets it bolster him, even as heat rises to his face. By the time he makes it to the first refrain, he’s gained a little more confidence.

_But look around_  
_Leaves are brown_  
_And the sky_  
_Is a hazy shade of winter_

He thinks he can hear Zach hum along with the last line, but when he looks up at him, he can’t tell if it was just his imagination. Still, a smile comes to his face when he launches into the next verse, despite the somewhat solemn lyrics. When he looks around, the others are smiling too, some staring into the fire, some staring off into the middle distance, like they are all trying to transport themselves to some other time and place. The last time they listened to music with loved ones, perhaps. Or the last time they sat outside in the snow. 

Chris lets his eyes fall shut for a moment and goes back in time himself, to the living room of Zach’s old loft, before they got married. He can see the sleet outside, the aggressive coldness that seemed to press into the room somehow. He can feel Zach draped across his back, breathing warm into his neck while he struggled to get the hang of Zach’s banjo, which was harder to pick up than he thought it would be. He wishes he had thought to grab that banjo when he left the house with Zach, so they could play a duet now, like they used to. But then, unexpectedly, Zach’s voice joins in with his, and that’s almost as good.

_Funny how my memory skips_  
_Looking over manuscripts_  
_Of unpublished rhyme_  
_Drinking my vodka and lime_

Chris smiles wider as they move into the last refrain and Zach’s voice easily finds the harmony. It is such a shame Zach never got to do Broadway. Maybe there is some alternate universe where he did, where Chris moved to New York to be with him and they both lived quieter lives as theater actors. Except in that scenario, they would more than likely be dead right now. Or Zach would be dead, and Chris would be alone. Things are fucked, the world has ended, but maybe somehow, this is better.

When the last note drifts away into silence, there is a smattering of applause, and Janine gives an enthusiastic little hoot. 

“Well,” Susan says, leaning forward to peek at the laundry bubbling in the pot and give it a small stir. “If we had known you two were that talented, we would have had you singing for your supper every night.”

Chris chuckles and blushes—and when he looks at Zach, he is, endearingly, doing the same thing. 

“I’m sure Chris will take requests.” Zach raises his eyebrows at him challengingly. Seeing his face all pinked up from the frigid air and his breath coming out in puffs of smoke makes Chris feel tender. And pleased. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get the image of the pale, skeletal, half-dead version of Zach out of his head, but he can try to crowd it into a corner by piling enough images of moments like this in with it. 

“Sure, I’ll take requests.” Chris gives the guitar a forceful strum and then stops the vibrations with his fingers. “Just don’t ask me for any Taylor Swift.”

Tristan makes a little put-out sound that has everyone laughing, but soon the group is shouting their song choices at him. Chris picks up the ones he knows. Blackbird. Heart of Gold. Layla. Maggie May. Tangled Up in Blue—which he forgets half the lyrics to, but ends up getting saved, surprisingly, by Harmony, whose voice is as light and sweet as a robin’s. 

Eventually, his fingers are aching and stiff from the cold and his voice is tired, and he has to hold up his hands when the next round of requests starts rolling in. Everyone groans theatrically, but it’s okay. Chris has a feeling this won’t be the last time this happens.

When he looks around, he notices for the first time how much snow has fallen while he’s been playing. Outside the circle near the fire, where the snow has been kept back by the heat, the ground is dusted with a thin layer of white, like powdered sugar. The ground still shows through in parts, but if this keeps up for another hour or so, they’ll probably be ankle deep in it. 

Susan, ever the responsible one, stands up and slaps her hands on her thighs. “We better get our chores wrapped up.”

Everyone gets up slowly, stretching out their cold, stiff joints. Susan recruits Vera and Tristan to help her tend to the laundry, and the rest of them wander off in their respective directions. Chris falls into step beside Zach to head back to the cabin. He needs to double-check on the garden before it gets buried under snow until spring, but first he has to put his guitar away, and he is glad for the excuse to be back at Zach’s side for a moment.

Zach glances over at him and then away again. “That was…nice.”

“Yeah,” Chris agrees. “We should do stuff like that more often. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

Zach makes a noncommittal sound. “I think the work part is a little more important now than it used to be.”

“Which makes the play part more important too.” Part of it is just stubborn arguing with Zach, but part of it is that he really believes it. What are their lives worth now if they are all drudgery? That’s no better than running on a hamster wheel.

Chris is a little unfairly influenced by how much softer Zach seems during the play parts though. More like the old Zach, from years ago, before they tore each other’s hearts apart. If there’s any hope of putting things back together again, it lies in those carefree moments, between chords and after good meals, Chris thinks. 

They walk the rest of the way back to the cabin in silence, accompanied only by the sound of their shoes crunching in the snow. Once inside, Chris carefully sets his guitar back inside its case and closes the lid. When he straightens up again and turns around, Zach is staring hard at him, which pulls him up short.

“What is it?” he asks, frowning.

“Will you take that ride with me tomorrow? Before the snow gets too deep?”

Honestly, Chris had assumed Zach forgot about that, or that it was only an empty offer to begin with. He is shocked to hear it resurface now, and a little wary of the reasons why Zach might want to be alone with him right now. His first thought is to catalog all the things he might have done wrong recently, all the times he might have gotten too friendly or said the wrong thing. 

“Sure,” he agrees, shrugging it off like he doesn’t have anxiety rolling in his gut. “That’d be nice.”

“Great.” Zach gives him a businesslike nod, then turns away quickly, going to dig through his clothes in a way that makes Chris suspicious he just needed something to do with his hands for a moment. Chris lets him have his out though. He walks past him and back out the door, into the crisp, clean chill, which he breathes deep into his lungs.

Winter is supposed to be the end of things, a time when the world goes to sleep for a while, but Chris feels a stirring like something inside him is about to come awake again. He hopes—he _hopes_ —he isn’t wrong.


	7. Chapter 7

The snow stops falling sometime before nightfall, and the next morning dawns bright and sunny, like the good weather wants to make one last rally before winter overtakes it. By mid-afternoon, the ground is all slush and mud, and the trees shine with crystalline droplets, and as Chris walks the trail down to the barn, the squelch of his boots is accompanied by a steady _drip, drip, drip_ that reminds him more of spring than the last quiet gasp of fall.

The horses are already tacked and ready to go when Chris gets there, standing placidly outside the pasture, their necks curved toward each other and their noses touching like they are whispering secrets. Zach is leaning against the fence next to them, looking up at the sky, one ankle crossed over the other. Chris thinks about how many times he has seen some version of that exact posture, usually with his phone in his hand, slaking his boredom by sifting through the endless trash dump of social media. It’s obvious now how much he used all of that as a shield. Now, he meets Chris’s eyes and his smile is almost shy, his fingers fluttering against the outsides of his thighs as he straightens up and takes a couple steps forward.

“Do you want to ride the new guy?” Zach slaps Hero’s black-and-white flank and then lets his hand rest there.

“Sure.” Chris tries to ignore the little flip in his stomach, the distant echo of an equine scream inside his head. “How is he?”

“Rides like a dream,” Zach gushes. “His canter is smooth as butter.”

“Listen to you, spouting the jargon.” 

Zach shoots him a secretive little grin before leading Rose a few steps away to mount up. For the first time in a while, Chris allows himself to feel genuinely excited about something. He figures this is probably a safe enough excitement that he can let it burn without fear that something is going to come along and snatch all the oxygen away. He grabs hold of the saddle and hoists himself up, then nudges Hero into step behind Rose, following toward a trail that stretches back into the trees, away from camp.

For a while, the trail is too narrow for them to ride side by side, and it’s too awkward to yell back and forth at one another, so they ride along in silence. Chris lets the reins go slack and looks around him, though there isn’t all that much to see. It’s just trees in all directions. The forest floor slopes ever-so-gently upward on his left hand side but stretches out straight on his right, and it’s studded with rocks and pine bushes and a few sparse patches of snow here and there, lingering where the sunlight can’t touch. Every once in a while, a bird will flit from tree to tree, but for the most part, everything is still and quiet. 

Eventually the path opens up a little, and he nudges Hero with his heels to get him to come up alongside Zach and Rose. Zach looks incredibly comfortable in the saddle for someone who had barely been on a horse before they came here. He seems almost gentler like this, with one hand absently stroking Rose’s mane, his eyes scanning the trail ahead of them, his expression unguarded. Now that Chris is presented with the opportunity to have a conversation with him, he isn’t sure he wants to take it and ruin the mood of this moment.

As if reading his mind, Zach takes the initiative and breaks the silence. “So, I thought we should probably talk.”

Despite how much Chris has been wanting to hear those words, his stomach drops, and his first instinct is to be defensive. “You wanted to drag me out away from camp so no one can hear my yelling, huh?”

Zach glances sideways at him, clearly not amused. “Look, I know you’re pissed at me. I just needed some time to get my head around everything.” 

“Get your head around what?” As if Chris doesn’t already know.

Zach raises a challenging eyebrow at him. “Come on. Seriously. You didn’t give me any time to process things. You were breathing down my neck from the moment I woke up, giving me those puppy eyes, silently begging me to…I don’t even know what. Do you even know what you want?”

Chris clams up, biting down on his bottom lip and turning his face away for a moment. It would be easy to screw this conversation up and to make everything worse than it already is. He wants desperately to do it right. He wants Zach to stop seeing him as an antagonist and start seeing him as an ally. 

“I haven’t exactly sat down and drawn up a five-year plan, no,” Chris sighs after a moment. “I just know that…that I never wanted to get divorced in the first place and—”

“Chris,” Zach cuts him off. “Really? Are you sure about that? Because I don’t remember you putting up much of a fight.”

Chris is flooded with indignation. How could Zach be trying to pin this on him right now? It wouldn’t have mattered if he fought tooth and nail to make him stay. Once Zach got it in his head that he wanted to leave, he was going to leave. 

“Could I really have stopped you?” 

Zach stares him down for a moment, his jaw clenching and unclenching. If ever there was a time Chris wished he knew what was going on in Zach’s head, it’s right now, but there are no hints. When Zach finally does take a deep breath and speak, he doesn’t even answer Chris’s question. “It wasn’t working. You were pulling away from me—”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“I couldn’t get you to talk to me! And you never wanted to go out—”

“Zach, that’s ridiculous. You knew that I was a homebody before we got married.” That can’t really be the problem, right? Chris can’t help but feel like Zach is not telling him something, either because he’s ashamed or because he’s afraid. He has his theories, though, about what really made Zach give up, and maybe now is as good a time as any to put them out there. “You know what I think? I think you never really wanted to be married to me at all. You just liked the _idea_ of being married to me, and when you realized that real life wasn’t going to be like your fantasies, you blamed me. If something doesn’t fit into your narrow little view of how the world should work, you completely dismiss it.”

Zach gives a minute shake of his head, like he can’t comprehend what Chris is saying to him. “What?”

“You had it in your head how married life was going to be. You thought it was going to be…what? Like a Star Trek press tour, but 24/7? All long, deep conversations and nights out on the town? You never tried to coexist with me. You wanted to shove me into this perfect husband box and then gave up the moment you realized I didn’t fit into it.”

The storm cloud that Chris has been waiting for since this conversation started finally passes across Zach’s face. His fingers tighten on the reins, and he gives his head a small, incredulous shake, his lips pressed into a thin line. Chris braces for the coming blow, but when Zach does speak, his voice is low and even and carefully controlled.

“You know, I get this shit a lot from other people, Chris. All my life, I have. But I thought you knew me better than that. I thought you _saw_ me.”

That is not at all the response Chris was expecting. He thought this was going to be his triumph, the moment he got Zach to admit that he is the author of all Chris’s pain. Instead, Zach looks angry, shocked, and hurt, and Chris’s heart is screaming at him to take it all back and make it better.

“Saw…what do you mean?” Chris asks, his voice small and confused, cowed in the face of Zach’s distress.

“I mean, I thought you knew I wasn’t that guy. The one who needs everything to be perfect.”

“I thought you weren’t. But it got to the point where you didn’t have anything good to say about me. You were always questioning my decisions or whining about how boring I was—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Zach says, cutting him off. “I never once called you boring.”

“Well, that’s what it felt like to me.”

“And I never questioned your decisions either. I just wanted to be a _part_ of your decisions. I didn’t want you to cut me out. You retreat into that head of yours and leave me all alone, and—“

He shuts his mouth with a clack, like he’s afraid he has said too much. Chris still doesn’t understand though—not really. The picture Zach is painting somehow doesn’t seem familiar to him at all. How did they get this out-of-step with each other?

For a few minutes, the only sounds are the fall of horses’ hooves on the dirt path and the creaking of the saddles. Chris worries at his bottom lip while he tries to figure out what he’s supposed to say now. Maybe Zach is right. Maybe they are incompatible, and their inability to get on the same page about even the smallest of things is evidence of that. But even when things were bad, even when he was sure that Zach hated every little thing that he did, he still looked at him and saw the only person in the world he couldn’t imagine living without. Even now, he still loves him. He still would go to the ends of the earth for him. Doesn’t that count for something?

He clears his throat. “When I was shot…”

“No, no, Chris. Please don’t.” Zach gives him a desperate look. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Let me get this out,” Chris insists, leaning forward over the saddle horn and curling his fingers in Hero’s mane. “When I was shot, and I thought it was all over, all I could think about was…all those years we’d never have together, all that time I wasted. I assumed I was going to have time to win you back. I didn’t think…that it could ever really be the end with us. But that was…very real proof that, whether I wanted it or not, there are a million things right now that could take us away from each other for good.”

“Chris…”

“No, I’m not…I just want to tell you that…if nothing changes, if all we do is…is sometimes sit next to each other by the fire and fall asleep a few feet from each other every night and…occasionally do things like this”—he gestured back and forth between them and the horses—”then fine, that’s fine with me. Because I’m so lucky that you’re still here at all, Zach. And that I’m here. I just want to have as much time with you as I can. That’s all.”

Zach swallows hard, looking at him like he can’t be sure that he’s even real. Chris doesn’t expect to get a response from him, so he isn’t surprised when he just drops his eyes after a moment and faces straight ahead again, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle. Hero swishes his tail restlessly and huffs, like he realizes that things are tense, and Chris feels an odd surge of affection for the beast.

It is tempting to say something more, at least to try to break the tension, but he doesn’t have a chance.

The terrified screams are unmistakably Naomi’s, and Chris and Zach spring into action at once, sharing only a concerned glance before they rein their horses around and take off back up the path in unison. Zach pulls ahead by the time they make it back to The Camp, and Chris tries to focus on Rose’s tail, not the desperate cries for help that make him want to fear the worst, putting images of more strangers with guns in his head.

They don’t stop at the barn, riding all the way up the lodge instead at a dead gallop. Out of the corner of his eye, Chris sees Harmony and Susan sprinting toward the garden. They make it there before Chris and Zach do, but only just.

Zach jumps down off Rose’s back before she even comes to a stop, but Chris is right on his heels. It’s Janine who is laying on the ground, on the far side of the garden, with Kyle kneeling over her, bloody hands pressed to her thigh, and Naomi cradling her head. As Chris gets closer, he sees the gash, the axe lying in the dirt next to them, and he has to turn away as his stomach heaves.

“What happened?” Harmony is asking shrilly.

“I was teaching her to split logs,” Kyle answers, his voice shaky in a way Chris almost can’t believe. The guy has always been so gruff and stoic. “The axe slipped. It’s…”

“Move,” Harmony snaps. “Get out of the way.”

Chris finally makes himself turn back around, but only so he can look for Zach. He’s standing right behind Naomi now, one hand on her shoulder, the other pressed to his mouth. Janine isn’t making any sounds, but her chest is rising and falling rapidly, erratically. Chris doesn’t dare move closer. His heart is pounding so hard that he fears it might give up on him any moment.

Yes, he is definitely no hero.

“Is she…?” Zach starts to ask, but he doesn’t finish the question. Is she going to be okay? Is she going to die? What was it he meant to say?

“I don’t know.” Harmony speaks in clipped tones that make Chris want to flinch. “Come on, we have to get her inside. Kyle, Chris, give us a hand.”

Chris can only obey, forcing himself to move closer one step at a time until Harmony’s sticky hand shoots out and grabs him and drags him closer, pulls him down to his knees. 

“Put pressure here,” she tells him, then presses his hands into the deep gash on the outside of Janine’s thigh. His fingers slide through the blood, and his stomach rolls again, but he can’t let himself lose it. She needs him.

“Susan, get Henry. You three, take her into the lodge,” Harmony says, before she takes off at a dead run, probably going to the supply cabin for whatever she needs to fix this. Please, please let her be able to fix this.

Susan runs off too, and Zach and Kyle gently move Naomi out of the way so they can hoist Janine carefully off the ground. Chris holds tight to her leg and shuffles along with them and tries to ignore the way blood oozes through his fingers. Once inside the lodge, they lay her out on one of the tables, and Zach moves to place his hands over Chris’s and apply extra pressure. Their fingers tangle together.

It seems like ages before Harmony comes back again, a first aid kit under her arm, Henry and Susan following in her wake. She shoves Chris and Zach away.

“Out, get out.”

“Is she…?” Zach starts to ask again, but Harmony has no patience for them right now. She hisses at them like a cornered badger.

“Get _out_ and let me work.”

Chris stumbles out the door and down the steps, only staying upright thanks to Zach’s arm around his shoulders. Out in the sunlight, he blinks, barely recognizing the world or the faces that should be familiar by now—Vera looking grave, Naomi looking shell-shocked, Tristan chewing his fingernails and staring at the door.

He makes the mistake of looking down at his hands, which are stained crimson. It doesn’t look real. He can’t look away.

Not until Zach pulls him into his arms.

\----

_”So, are you taking good care of my brother?” Katie asks, leaning forward over the table and raising her eyebrows in mock seriousness. “Because I know you have like six inches and probably fifty pounds on me, but I could still kick your ass.”_

_Chris kicks her playfully under the table. “Aren’t you supposed to worry about things like that before I get married?”_

_“Nah, I knew he was taking good care of you before you got married. This is just a checkup. A reminder that the threat didn’t go away when you put a ring on it.”_

_Zach seems torn between playing along and genuine indignation. “Why don’t you ask your brother if he’s taking good care of me, huh?”_

_“Because I assume Joe is taking care of that.” Katie tears into a fluffy roll and shoves a piece of it into her mouth, then chews with a sweet smile on her face. Zach rolls his eyes and shoots Chris a bemused look._

_“I’m taking care of him, Katie,” he reassures her, though he’s still looking at Chris when he says it. Chris squeezes his knee under the table, smiling softly at him. The truth is, if anyone is taking care of anyone, it’s Chris taking care of Zach, but that’s okay. They have a routine down now. Chris cooks, he cleans, he makes sure Zach remembers to pack warm enough clothes when he flies to the other side of the country for work. Zach is fantastic at ordering pizza and rubbing Chris’s shoulders and conceding, with some whining, to watching his favorite movies. But loving him feels like that only thing that keeps Chris sane most days, and that is more than enough._

_“Okay, so when are the kids coming then?”_

_Both of their heads snap toward her at that, and the pasta Chris just ate turns into a rock in his stomach. “What?”_

_“Come on,” she says, indifferent to Chris’s discomfort. “Your nephew needs a little cousin to play with.”_

_Chris turns his head slowly toward Zach again, hoping to see a similar stricken expression on his face, but Zach is looking down at this plate, and there is color in his cheeks, and he seems to be hell-bent on not meeting Chris’s eyes right now._

_“Uh oh,” Katie says. “Looks like I struck a nerve. Whoops.”_

_Honestly, Chris wasn’t aware there was a nerve to strike before now. He had assumed that kids weren’t going to be in their future. Zach is 40. They are both still working. How on earth would they be able to have a kid?_

_“We…we haven’t talked about it,” Chris says, in a lame attempt to keep this conversation from getting even more awkward that it already is. “Life is kind of busy right now.”_

_Katie shoots him a skeptical look, but she is tactful enough to know it’s time to move on. They finish their meal over much more cheerful, if shallow, conversation, but Zach is clearly more withdrawn all of a sudden, barely glancing Chris’s way and stiffening slightly under each of his touches. Chris knows they aren’t done talking about this, so when Zach turns to him the moment they get into the car, he isn’t surprised._

_“You don’t want kids, do you?” No beating around the bush for Zach, that’s for sure. Chris can’t help but grimace._

_“I just…never thought it would be in the cards for me, that’s all. It’s not in my life plan.”_

_“And what about my life plan?”_

_Chris sighs and shoves the keys into the ignition, then starts up the car. He has half a mind to throw the car in reverse and peel out and ignore that unfairly confrontational question, but he really doesn’t want to make this worse, so he drops both hands into his lap and turns to look at Zach, his expression pleading. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”_

_“I thought you knew. We’ve talked about me wanting kids in the past.”_

_“Yeah, but that was when you were still with—” Chris cuts himself off, realizing that it’s both irrelevant and a bad idea to bring up past relationships right now. Plus, Zach is right. Chris has had a front-row seat to the way Zach’s eyes light up around kids for a long time now, and he isn’t sure why he’s been in such denial about this being relevant to their lives at some point. It’s just that the thought of having a kid terrifies him. You don’t get a break with a kid. It’s a 24/7/365 job._

_“When were you going to bring this up with me?” he sighs, searching Zach’s face for some sign that they can surmount this particular issue._

_“I don’t know.” Zach’s voice is small in a way that Chris never hears it. “I had a feeling you’d react like this. I kept putting it off.”_

_Chris reaches out and takes his hand, threading their fingers together and stroking his thumb across his skin. He licks his lips nervously, then takes a deep breath. “Do you…do you still want to be with me? If I don’t want kids?”_

_“Jesus. Of course.” Zach reaches for his face and pulls him in for a kiss that feels more like an attempt to hide than anything else. When he pulls away, something flashes across his expression that Chris can’t quite place but knows he doesn’t like. “And maybe…maybe you’ll change your mind.”_

_Chris forces a weak smile. “It’s possible.”_

_Possible, but not probable. The hope in Zach’s eyes makes it impossible to pull the rug out from under him, as much as Chris knows he should._

\----

Janine is stable for now, but everyone is holding their breath.

There are so many important things she could have hit with that axe, but instead she hit the meat of her leg. Harmony stumbled out of the lodge looking like she had just murdered someone, but she managed to stop the bleeding and sew Janine up, and after a couple weeks of bed rest, she will likely be up and moving again, provided there are no complications. They don’t have the means for treating infections, should one crop up. Christ, that’s a terrifying thought.

Chris and Zach have very different ways of dealing with the trauma. While Chris throws himself back into work as hard as he can, trying to keep busy by any means possible, Zach seems to grow more and more listless. He spends more time inside the cabin, curled up in bed with Skunk in his lap, rereading books he read months ago. Chris knows that he goes to visit Janine often, but he never seems to be able to catch him at it. When he goes to visit her himself, it’s always Harmony or Henry who is there, watching over her to make sure her fever doesn’t spike. Much of the time she is asleep. Sometimes she is alert enough to flash weak smiles and make quiet jokes about how this should get her out of wood-chopping duty for life.

It’s difficult to have another startling reminder of their mortality. In his old life, Chris wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the idea of suffering an axe wound, but now it is a very real fear. Danger doesn’t just come from crazy people with guns. It’s lurking all around them.

And it’s inside their heads too. Chris knows it would be so easy for one of them to let this drive them crazy. Tristan’s fingers are always crusted with blood from biting his fingernails too much. Naomi barely picks at her dinner and constantly looks over her shoulder, like she’s expecting to see Janine skipping happily up the path. Kyle stares off into space a lot. Harmony is more snappish than ever.

If Chris was a praying man, he would pray for Janine to recover soon and hopefully breathe some sanity back into all of them. As it stands, there isn’t much he can do. He tries to bring out his guitar a little more often, for morale’s sake, but if it helps at all, he can’t tell.

A week after Janine’s injury, Chris comes back from her bedside to find Zach in bed as usual, but this time, something is different. Zach doesn’t move fast enough. Or rather, he moves too fast. If he hadn’t been in such a scramble to hide whatever it was he was doing when Chris walked in, then Chris wouldn’t have walked over to the bed and grabbed his wrist, stopping him before he could hide what he has in his hand. But now that Chris is looking down and seeing what he’s seeing, he regrets thinking that this was any of his business. It would have been better if he had caught Zach with his pants down.

It’s a photograph. One of the things Chris made sure to grab when he left the house was their wedding album, one of the few physical albums of pictures they own—thanks, digital photography. Zach must have pilfered this picture from there, and, from the looks of it, he has been keeping it close by, either in his pocket or under his pillow or inside his jacket. It is creased and bent at the edges, the faces in it slightly distorted. His face. Zach’s face. And the faces of their family members too—Chris’s parents, Zach’s mom, Joe, Katie. They are all smiling bright, genuine smiles, their arms wrapped tightly around shoulders and waists. It’s a picture full of people who love each other, a picture of a family.

Chris gasps and lets go of Zach’s wrist, taking a reflexive step back. “Shit. I’m…I’m sorry, Zach.”

Zach scowls and turns to tuck the picture away inside his pillowcase, solving the mystery of how it came to look as worn as it does. He swipes the back of his hand across his eyes and keeps his face turned toward the wall. Chris knows he should probably just turn and walk out of the cabin again, leave Zach to feel whatever emotions he’s feeling, but…that is _their_ family in that picture, and Chris misses them too, so much. 

“Zach,” he says gently, reaching out to place tentative fingers on Zach’s shoulder. At first, Zach tenses up, like he is going to jerk away, but then he brings his hands up to hide his face and collapses against Chris like he’s desperate for his touch.

“I can’t believe they’re gone.” His voice is thin and watery, gripping his face so hard that little white circles are blooming around his fingertips. “I _don’t_ believe it. How am I supposed to?”

Chris sucks in a sharp breath and clambers onto the bed, his knees bracketing Zach’s, and carefully, oh so carefully, coaxes him forward, until Zach’s arms are going around his waist and his face is pushing into his neck. Within moments, he feels tears on his skin. Zach is shaking, and he keeps making wet sounds in the back of his throat, like he’s swallowing down on his sobs. Chris has to squeeze his own eyes shut against the sting, but it doesn’t do much good. He didn’t get to cry when he buried his parents, and he didn’t get to cry when he thought Zach was going to die, so maybe he deserves to cry now. Maybe this is the perfect time to stop pretending like being strong for the past five months isn’t the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his life. He never was that strong to begin with.

“It’s okay,” he says thickly, rubbing his hand in soothing circles on Zach’s back. “It’s alright, baby. You’re allowed to miss them.”

Zach chokes on a sob, sucks in a ragged breath, and then he’s crying in earnest, his shoulders heaving with it, his tears soaking into the collar of Chris’s shirt. And Chris can’t do anything but join him, pressing his face into his hair and letting all of his grief spill out. Months of carefully constructed defenses crumble like spun sugar. When Zach touches him, he is weak. For the first time in his life, he is okay with being weak.

“Tell me why,” Zach begs. “Why them and not us? Why are we still here?”

Chris doesn’t have an answer, and he doesn’t want to try to make one up. After everything, the least Zach deserves right now is honesty. And there is only one thing that he can honestly say.

“I’m glad you’re still here.” He strokes Zach’s hair, then presses a kiss into it. When he tries to back away a little, Zach resists, gripping him tighter, but he fights with him until he manages to get Zach’s face in his hands and make him meet his eyes. His face is wet with tears, and his mouth is contorted with despair, but Chris is certain that he probably doesn’t look much better. “Do you hear me, Zach? I’m glad you’re still here. I wouldn’t trade that for anything else. I wouldn’t trade your life for anyone else’s. And if you even think about giving up on me now, I will march right into the depths of hell and pull you out again. Do you understand me?”

Zach lets out a desperate little sob and grips Chris’s wrists, pulling them away from his face so he can lean in and press their mouths together. He tastes like salt and his lips are rough, chapped by the cold mountain air, but he’s still Zach, underneath all of it. Before, by the river, that wasn’t Zach. This man who kisses him like a penitent is far closer to the one he married, even if Chris can count too many of his ribs and doesn’t remember him ever shaking in his arms like this.

“Please, stay here with me,” Zach begs against his mouth, just before he takes Chris’s bottom lip between his own again. “Just for a little. Will you just…”

Chris understands what he’s asking without having it spelled out any more than that. He gently eases Zach down onto the bed on his side and spoons up behind him, throwing the blanket over them both and wrapping Zach tightly in his arms. Zach’s sobs don’t die out for a while, but Chris holds him through it, murmuring words of comfort into the back of his neck, inhaling the scent of his skin. Only when Zach has cried himself out and dropped off to sleep does Chris slip out of his bed. He is certain he wouldn’t want to wake up to find him still there, evidence of his moment of weakness.

He tucks the blanket around Zach’s shoulders and kisses his upturned cheek, then swipes his thumb through the tear tracks. 

“Until death do us part, right?” he whispers. He was always going to love Zach at least that long.

\----

_Chris shoots a smile over his shoulder when he hears footsteps coming across the patio toward him. “Hey! How was lunch with Joe?”_

_“Good,” Zach says, stopping at the edge of the flowerbed and surveying Chris’s work. Chris has spent most of the morning weeding and planting marigolds, and this corner of the garden is starting to look less like the wild wreck it did before. He just got back from a week away in New York, doing promo for Wonder Woman, and something about doing wall-to-wall interviews without Zach at his side makes him want to come back here and tear at the earth. Gardening is calming like few other things in life for him._

_He straightens up a little and swipes his arm across his forehead, squinting up at Zach. “Want to get changed and come help me?”_

_“Are you kidding?” Zach wrinkles his nose. “You know my thumbs are the exact opposite of green.”_

_Chris chuckles at him as he sits back on his heels. “You just don’t like getting your hands dirty.”_

_“Well, I have to keep them clean for you, don’t I?” He lifts his left hand and wiggles his well-manicured fingers, grinning lewdly. Chris throws his head back and laughs. Someday he’ll stop being caught off guard by Zach’s complete lack of bashfulness, but today is evidently not that day._

_“Yeah, I guess I don’t really have that problem.” He looks down at the dirt underneath his own fingernails and shrugs._

_“What if you did?”_

_Chris doesn’t catch on at first. He glances up at Zach again with eyebrows raised, but Zach is just looking expectantly back at him, waiting for whatever it is he’s trying to say to sink in. It isn’t until the edges of his expression start to crumble, little glimpses of vulnerability showing through, that Chris realizes what he’s saying, and he sucks in a surprised breath._

_“What?” he says, needing Zach to confirm._

_Zach shifts his weight awkwardly and tucks his hands in his back pockets. “What if…I wanted you to…”_

_Apparently Zach can still be bashful sometimes after all. They’ve been together almost a year, married for the majority of that time, and not once has Zach indicated a willingness to bottom for Chris. But he certainly seems to be indicating that now._

_“I didn’t think you were into that,” Chris says slowly. It hasn’t even bothered him either. He loves the way things are between them now. But imagining Zach spread out underneath him, those long legs wrapped around him…he is pretty sure he’d have to be dead to not want that._

_“I’m usually not.” Zach scuffs his toe on the patio. “But I love you. And I trust you.”_

_Chris has heard some really filthy stuff come out of Zach’s mouth in the time they have been together, but somehow this is the most erotic thing he has ever heard. Arousal pools in his gut at the same time as a lump forms in his throat. Slowly, he gets to his feet and walks over to Zach, then leans in for a kiss that has Zach unfolding for him like a flower. Maybe Chris’s green thumb works on him too._

_“You’re going to have to wash your hands though,” Zach murmurs, smiling against his lips. Chris loves it—the feeling of kissing a grin. Zach’s grin._

_“I’ll take a shower.”_

_“No.” Zach drops his face to Chris’s neck and inhales. “No, don’t. You smell like summer.”_

\----

It is admirable that Naomi and Vera spent hours painstakingly cutting festive shapes out of empty tin cans so they could have Christmas ornaments, but unfortunately they still look like someone just cut up empty tin cans. Their little tree is kind of sad too, its branches sparse, its trunk slightly crooked. It sags in the corner of the kitchen, looking a little too much like the pitiful tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas, complete with a ring of fallen needles around its base. But Kyle insists it was the only one he could find that was small enough to fit inside, so they can make do. Chris would be lying if he said he didn’t feel like smiling every time he sees it.

But a lot of that is probably because of the normalcy of it. In the days leading up to Christmas, there is the same sense of excitement in the air that Chris is used to from back when life was normal. The pall that has hung over them for the past few weeks has listed, and everyone seems a little more cheerful, bolstered by having something to look forward to, even if it is a small something. There won’t be any presents under the tree and there won’t be any spiked egg nog, but Christmas is still Christmas, whether the world as they know it has ended or not.

There are _some_ special treats, anyway. Chris spends a whole afternoon helping Vera make sugar cookies—just a small batch, since they can only spare so much of their precious reserves of flour and sugar, but enough for everyone to have one on Christmas Eve. They also manage to scrounge together a few things for Oliver to open. Chris makes him an extremely rudimentary little truck, which is really barely more than one plank of wood with four wheels. Naomi sews him up a cool little denim jacket made from old, holey jeans. Susan has one precious Snickers bar that she valiantly gives up. 

And then there is Janine, who brings tears to their eyes when she manages to walk up to the kitchen under her own power on Christmas Eve, clutching a small blue teddy bear, mumbling something about it belonging to her little sister. She can’t remain standing long, and Zach ends up having to help her back to her cabin, but the fact that she is up and moving around at all is another reason to hope.

They all pitch in to wrap up the presents in old burlap. It won’t be as satisfying to tear into as colorful wrapping paper, but it’s what’s inside that counts, and they all want to do what they can to give Oliver a somewhat normal Christmas. If they can keep the childlike wonder alive in the one child among them, maybe they can keep it alive in themselves too.

Chris is up with the sun on Christmas morning, and he slips out of the cabin before Zach wakes up. Skunk follows him out, and Chris watches him snuffle around in the underbrush for a while to do his business before he calls him to his side. They head up the path toward the lodge to see if Susan has put the coffee on yet. Sure enough, she’s there, sitting close to the fire with her hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Chris ladles some out for himself and then sits down across from her.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, smiling.

“Merry Christmas.” She echoes his words but not his expression, making him cock his head at her. Noticing his silent question, she shakes her head. “It’s just going to be a hard day. That’s all.”

Chris hums his understanding and inhales deeply from his mug. He is trying not to let himself think about it—the ones who aren’t here, the family they should be celebrating with. Concentrating on things like that will make a person crazy. Bottling up his grief might not be the best of strategies, but wallowing in it isn’t going to work either, he knows that much.

To practically no one’s surprise, Oliver is up far earlier than usual, and his whooping drags the lollygaggers out of bed. Chris barely finishes his first cup of coffee before they are all getting dragged into the kitchen for present time. There aren’t enough seats for everyone, so when Zach wanders in last, he ends up leaning against the wall next to Janine’s chair, his hand on her shoulder, all the way across the room from Chris. The whole time Oliver is opening presents, his delighted peals of laughter filling up the room, Chris wishes he was closer to Zach. He wishes it was like the last Christmas they were together, when they were crammed together in one armchair in Margo’s house in Pittsburgh. For a moment, he resents that anyone else is here with them, taking Zach’s attention away from him at a time when all Chris wants to do is try to strengthen the little gossamer threads of affection that seem to be stretching between them again. 

But living with eight other people isn’t conducive to alone time, and living during the apocalypse isn’t conducive to giving much weight to transient feelings. Even on Christmas day, there is work to do. There are chickens and goats and horses to feed. There are window boxes to water and camp showers to refill, so the water can warm up in the midday sun. 

And there is food prep to do—so much food prep. If Thanksgiving was an indulgence for them, this is a true feast, to the point where Chris almost questions the intelligence of burning through this many rare resources. They killed one of the goats, and Henry, Naomi, and Zach all leave the room when it comes time to butcher the poor thing, refusing to be comforted even by the reassurance that they’ll have some babies in a couple months. They kill another chicken too. Chris tries hard to feel bad about all the meat, but he can’t, not even when he’s the one who has to pluck the feathers and scoop out the innards. Vera also makes mashed potatoes and spares a little bit more flour to make thin gravy out of the chicken stock. She breaks out cans of blackberry jam for them to spread on saltine crackers. There are two cans of apple pie filling lingering at the bottom of the pile of canned food, and she turns them into beautiful pies. Chris flits around the kitchen all afternoon, helping however he can, but mostly he feels like an amateur. He always thought he was a decent cook, but Vera is a true master of the craft. What she manages to do with what little they have available to them never ceases to amaze him.

They eat in the mid-afternoon, crowding around the picnic table again even though the weather is truly frigid now. Everyone holds their tarnished silverware in gloved hands and pauses often to wipe their running noses. Chris hardly notices how cold it is for savoring the food though. It will probably be almost a year—until next Thanksgiving—before they eat like this again, and by then who knows what life will look like for them? Who knows whether they will be overflowing with resources or down to their last can of fruit cocktail? All they can do is savor what they have now, and if you ask Chris, it’s pretty damn good.

After the meal is over, they clear the dishes away quickly and move over to the fire. Chris has his guitar again, and this time everyone joins in to sing Christmas carols, Oliver’s voice the loudest of all. He is, incongruously, sitting on Zach’s lap. Chris has heard rumblings that they have taken to each other, knows that Oliver likes Skunk and all the animals down at the barn and therefore ends up spending a lot of time with Zach by default, but it’s strange to see it with his own eyes. The boy looks like a little Christmas angel, Chris thinks—his auburn curls sticking out from under his hat, his cheeks as rosy as a child from a vintage picture book. And Zach looks…content. He bounces Oliver on his knees, tickles his ribs to get him to laugh between songs. Chris is aware he’s not the only one watching—that Naomi and, more unfortunately, Tristan are making moony eyes in his direction.

All too soon, it’s time to break for evening chores—cleaning up after the meal and feeding the animals again and making sure everything they didn’t use is locked back up in the supply cabin. Oliver ends up falling asleep under their sad little tree, until Kyle picks him up and follows Vera back to her cabin to help put him to bed. Everyone else talks about gathering back by the fire for a while—even Janine, with her bum leg stretched out straight in front of her, looking tired but content.

It should be a nice evening, but Chris feels oddly exhausted—a soul-deep tired that comes from too much togetherness and too many emotions. His eyes feel itchy and his throat feels tight, and even though it was certainly the most perfect Christmas he could have hoped for, he longs for a return to their normal routine. It’s easier not to think when he is just going through the motions, pretending this life is the only life he’s ever known. A day like Christmas connects him too much to a chain of events in the past. He has borne it all day, enjoyed it in all the ways he should have enjoyed it, but now he wants to take off his mask and collapse into bed and fall asleep before he can think about all the ways this day could have been so much better, most of which have too much to do with all that wallowing in grief he told himself he wasn’t going to do.

He ends up leaving the little circle by the fire early, and he is surprised when he hears footsteps on the path behind him; he looks over his shoulder to see Zach following him back to the cabin. He slows enough to let him catch up, then shoots him a cautious smile.

“Merry Christmas,” he says quietly, like the darkness around them means he has to whisper. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier. It’s been a surprisingly long day.”

“Merry Christmas.” Zach grins genuinely at him, and even reaches out to give his shoulder a squeeze. Chris wishes he could wrap his arm around his waist and pull him close, but he can’t. Whatever fragile truce they have now, Chris doesn’t want to ruin it. Zach has been opening up to him, but he is still playing his cards close to the chest in a lot of ways. Chris knows it’s not a coincidence that he hasn’t told Chris whether or not he still loves him, or whether he thinks they could give this another shot. And Chris can’t bring himself to push it, because he’s afraid he’ll just push Zach away. Tempting him closer is like trying to get a wild animal to eat out of the palm of your hand. He just has to sit still and quiet and wait for Zach to decide he’s trustworthy.

When they reach the cabin, Zach gathers his clothes together and heads for the shower, but Chris just strips down to his underwear and climbs in bed, too weary to read or clean or do anything he probably should be doing. And yet he can’t seem to make his eyes close. He’s still staring at Zach’s empty bed when Zach walks back into the room, his skin glistening, rubbing his hair with a towel. He glances Chris’s way, sees that he’s still awake, and frowns.

“Everything alright?”

Chris nods cautiously, but he’s not sure how honest he’s being. He thinks he’s alright. He has a feeling the deep, gnawing loneliness churning in the pit of his gut has been there for a long time, so he can’t really claim it as a new problem. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

Zach goes about putting his things away and undressing, and Chris follows him with his eyes, not even bothering to drop his gaze when he looks his way as he’s climbing into bed. They stare at each other from across the space between their beds for a few moments. Chris waits for bashfulness to bubble up inside him and make him look away, but it never comes.

When Zach lifts his arm, lifting his blanket with it, Chris doesn’t even hesitate before sliding out of his bed and climbing into Zach’s. 

“It’s cold tonight,” Zach says by way of explanation, as if it hasn’t been cold every night for the past couple months. But if he needs a way to explain this away, then Chris will let him have it, as long as this doesn’t end. He curls an arm around Zach’s waist and tangles their legs together, and he is almost certain he sees a smile flash quickly across Zach’s face in the dark. The anxiety he has been feeling fades a bit, and something loosens in his chest, making it easier to breathe.

“Tell me about your favorite Christmas,” Chris says, cuddling just a little closer and closing his eyes. Zach lets out a little chuckle, but he doesn’t protest—just launches into a story Chris has heard before, one from when he was young, when his dad was still alive, when they all went sledding together after dinner, as a family. The sound of his voice soothes Chris and makes him brave enough to press in until their foreheads are resting together and they are breathing the same air. He falls asleep like that, with Zach’s low murmuring in his ears. He dreams happy dreams—dreams of the past.


	8. Chapter 8

It snows for the first two weeks of January, every single day, until there are drifts piled up against the sides of the cabins and slogging around the camp gets progressively harder. Chris tries to keep the path from their cabin to the lodge clear, but it’s a losing battle. The best he can do is keep it at about ankle height, which is just enough to ensure they are constantly living with cold feet and wet jeans. The thin pine branches overhead do little to keep the snow off the ground but still somehow manage to dump piles on the heads of unsuspecting victims. 

As susceptible to the cold as he is, Chris tries to spend most of his time inside the cabin. Luckily, his current project doesn’t require him to be outside—though Zach would probably disagree with that assessment, considering how often he eyes the little mounds of sawdust accumulating on the floor with narrowed eyes and a wrinkled nose. He doesn’t nag him about it, though he does look up from his book every now and then and ask how much longer it will be until he’s finished. Chris chooses to take that as excitement though. He thinks he sees a little bit of a sparkle in Zach’s eyes a couple times, which makes him pretty sure the end result is going to be worth it. Every evening, he dutifully sweeps the sawdust out the back door and stacks the tools in the corner, and then goes to sleep in his own bed, though it’s hard not to look longingly at Zach’s and wish he could climb in with him again instead.

When he finally finishes, it’s edging toward evening, but there’s still enough light out. He turns to Zach, who is sitting up in bed with a blanket around his shoulders and a book in his lap, and holds up the completed sled.

Zach looks up, stares for a moment, and then smiles. “You’re done.”

“Mmhmm.” Chris runs his palm over the wood, which he has meticulously sanded down so there are no splinters. When he looks back up at Zach, he hesitates, unsure whether the question he wants to ask is worth the potential for rejection. “Do you…do you want to come with me to get Oliver?”

Zach snaps his book shut immediately, and though he turns his head to hide his expression, Chris can see a brief flash of teeth, a hint of a grin. When he turns back, his face is blank again, but Chris knows him too well to miss the sparkle in his eyes.

“Yeah, let’s go. We have a couple hours until dark.”

They find the boy with his grandmother in the kitchen, and he jumps up and down and crows with delight when he sees the sled in Chris’s hands. Vera smiles indulgently and shoos Oliver off with them, obviously grateful for the opportunity to finish cooking dinner in peace. Chris takes one of his hands and Zach takes the other, and the three of them set out.

The best unobstructed hill in The Camp is the dirt road that leads up from the highway. There are no trees to run into there, and the snow is unmarred by the passage of feet or animals. The grade is just steep enough to be thrilling, but not so steep they have to worry about their safety or, more importantly, Oliver’s. They walk past the line of cars parked by the lodge, most of them now defunct and sleeping beneath blankets of snow, and stop at the top of the road. Zach has to hoist Oliver up into his arms, as the drifts are up to his thighs.

“This is going to work perfectly,” Chris declares, as if he’s the expert on sledding suddenly. He sets the sled down and pushes it back and forth a couple times with his hands, making sure it will slide. It does. He grins up at Zach, who smiles back down at him and bounces Oliver on his hip.

“Okay, you ready, bud?” Zach tugs the zipper of Oliver’s coat snugly up under his chin, then adjusts his hat to make sure it’s over his ears. “Chris will go down with—”

“Nuh-uh,” Chris interrupts. He straightens up again and shakes his head. “Nope. You, Zach, not me.”

Zach considers arguing for all of two seconds—Chris can see it on his face—but then his mouth splits into a grin, and he swoops into action, walking over to the sled and lowering Oliver down onto it before sitting down behind him. It’s a snug fit with the two of them, but Zach curls his long legs up as best he can and wraps one arm tight around Oliver’s middle, and they make it work.

“Alright, Ollie,” Zach says. “Tell Chris to give us a push.”

“Push us, Chris, push us!” Oliver squeals. “Let’s go!”

Laughing, Chris bends to plant his hands in the middle of Zach’s back. For a moment, a different version of this scene flashes in front of his eyes. He and Zach and their own child, in a world where the pandemic never happened and neither did the divorce, a world where Chris would lean in and kiss Zach’s cheek right now, shove his freezing hands up under his shirt just to make him jerk and yell. 

“Alright, here we go!” he says, pushing the fantasy out of his head. He leans against Zach until he feels the sled start to move. Oliver shrieks with delight as they start to pick up momentum. Zach lets out a whoop as well, and Chris can’t help but clap his hands and cheer along with them. They zip down to the bottom of the hill, where Zach puts out his foot to stop them, sending up a spray of powder. Chris can hear Zach’s low rumble of a laugh, hear the way Oliver is chattering excitedly and asking to go again. They make a beautiful picture. Chris wishes he had a camera.

He crosses his arms across his middle and watches them as they walk up the hill again, hand in hand, Zach dragging the sled behind him. When they reach him again, Zach holds out the loop of rope, and when Chris doesn’t immediately take it from him, he presses it into his hand. 

“Your turn.”

Chris shakes his head. “It’s okay, you enjoy—”

“No, it’s your turn,” Zach insists. Oliver joins in too, slogging through the snow to take Chris’s hand and pulling on it, jumping up and down.

“Come on! It’s so much fun!”

Chris can’t resist both of them. He rolls his eyes at Zach, but then he leads Oliver over to the middle of the hill again and gets the sled into position, holding it still so Oliver can climb on. 

“Make sure you keep those scrawny giraffe legs out of the way,” Zach teases. It takes a great deal of effort for Chris to look offended instead of completely besotted. The fact that Zach feels comfortable enough to joke around with him fills him with warmth and no small amount of optimism. He’s smiling as he lowers himself down behind Oliver.

“Okay, ready. Gives us a shove, Zach.” 

Chris holds Oliver close, marveling at what a little furnace he is despite how cold it is outside. When Zach’s hands find the small of his back, he sucks in a breath and holds it, resisting the urge to close his eyes and focus only on the touch for as long as it lasts. But it only lasts a second, long enough for one good shove, and then they’re off.

It goes by fast, but slow at the same time, the moments stretching out like pulled taffy—blurry trees, icy wind, Oliver’s thrilled giggles. Chris feels buoyant, and he wonders if they are going to get to the bottom of the hill and then just keep going, up over the trees, into the pale gray sky. One of Oliver’s tiny hands is clutching his forearm, and he is practically vibrating with delight. It is the most pure happiness that Chris has felt in a long time.

When they reach the bottom and Chris brings the sled to a stop, Oliver squirms out of his arms and jumps up again, already running back up the hill to get Zach. Chris smiles as he trails after him, then lifts his eyes and smiles directly at Zach. Zach is standing there with his hands in his back pockets, his expression soft and contemplative. His lips twitch when he meets Chris’s gaze.

They keep taking turns after that, sledding down the hill with Oliver over and over until the sun disappears below the trees and the light gets soft and fuzzy, indicating it’s time for dinner soon. They all have red faces and runny noses from the cold and the wind, but they also are smiling as they start back toward the lodge. Zach carries Oliver, who is too exhausted to walk but not too exhausted to curl an arm around his neck and chatter in his ear about how he wants to take his grandma sledding tomorrow and how he saw a deer that morning and how he hopes they have mac and cheese for dinner. The last thought hurts Chris’s heart a little. Four-year-old boys should be able to eat all the mac and cheese they want—and chicken nuggets and fish sticks and McDonald’s happy meals. Oliver will grow up in this world, and he probably won’t even remember the difference in a couple years, but it’s sad right now to think how much he is going to miss out on. Chris is glad he could at least give him the simple pleasure of a sled.

He looks over at Zach, who is listening to Oliver talk with a solemn expression on his face but a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Chris is glad he could give him the simple pleasure of a sled too. Maybe this will bring them closer and maybe it won’t, but he could use a little childlike wonder is his life now. They all could.

\----

_When Chris finally gets a break and goes back to his trailer, he has five missed calls from Zach. He curses under his breath and calls him back immediately, breathing out a winded ‘Sorry’ in place of a ‘Hello’ the moment Zach picks up._

_“Don’t worry about it, babe,” Zach says, his voice flat. “I know you’re filming. I didn’t expect to reach you anyway.”_

_Chris winces and collapses down onto the couch. As strung-out as he feels, he has to rouse himself for this conversation. It’s the first time Zach has been back in New York without him since they got married, and he’s been working on closing the sale of his loft. The whole thing has been a touchy subject. At first Zach wanted to keep it, just to have someplace to stay when they got back east for work or to visit—or so he said. Chris kept wheedling though. He wanted a fresh start, still wants a fresh start. He spent a lot of good nights at Zach’s place in the city, but he still associates it with The Time Before, and he thinks it’s a good idea to move on. Eventually Zach gave in, but Chris doesn’t think he’s all that happy about it._

_“So, how’d it go?” he asks. “Did you get it all wrapped up?”_

_“Yeah.” Zach sounds tired and distant, more distant than he should even from thousands of miles away. “I just turned in my key. Mr. and Mrs. Houston, Texas and their little kiddo own the place now.”_

_Sometimes Zach forgets he’s not a native New Yorker and he has no more reason to be disdainful of immigrants than anyone else. Usually, Chris would snort at him, but today he knows better. If he wants to stay out of the dog house, he has to play this conversation carefully._

_“It’s not goodbye forever, Zach. We can pick out a new place this summer, if you want.”_

_“No, I know,” Zach says, though he doesn’t sound convinced. “It’s just sad any time you have to move on from a place.”_

_It’s funny, because Chris doesn’t remember him being all that sad when he sold his LA house. God, but that’s ancient history though. Why is Chris still thinking about it? He has a wedding ring on his finger; that means he doesn’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. Now, Zach goes where he goes and vice versa._

_“Well, in a couple days you’ll be back home with me,” he says. He means the words to be a comfort, but as soon as they come out of his mouth, he’s not so sure they are going to have their intended effect._

_Sure enough, Zach huffs irritably into the phone. “It’s not a contest, Chris. I can be upset about leaving New York and still happy to be with you.”_

_“That’s…I didn’t mean…” Chris closes his eyes and tips his head back against the back of the couch. This marriage thing is harder than anyone said it would be. It’s hard to be a unit and still be two individuals. It’s hard to give Zach the space he needs when he’s worried about what happens if there is too much space between them. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want you to be upset, Zach. Not because I’m threatened, but because…because I never want you to be upset.”_

_There is silence for a few moments and then a quiet little sniffle. When Zach speaks again, his voice sounds suspiciously thick. “I know, baby. I know. I’m just being sentimental and melodramatic. You don’t have to worry about me.”_

_“I’ll worry about you all I want.” Chris’s voice is light, but he’s dead serious. He could no more stop worrying about Zach than he could stop breathing. Which is why he takes a deep breath and says, “I could leave LA, if you want.”_

_He would, for Zach. He doesn’t want to, but he would. Maybe he should have said something sooner, before Zach turned in the keys to his beloved apartment, but better late than never, right? He just needs Zach to know he is in this with him one hundred percent, even if it means leaving his home, the place he has lived his entire life and has never had the courage to leave. But he is pretty sure he would have the courage with Zach at his side. Zach always makes him feel so much braver._

_“I love you so much, you know that?” Zach’s voice definitely sounds watery now. Chris wishes he could reach through the phone and put his arms around him._

_“Me too, Zach.” He grins up at the ceiling. “Now where have we landed on the moving thing?”_

_Zach chuckles, but it’s not the happiest of sounds. “No. Our home is in LA. Trust me, I’ll be over this by the time I get back. I just need to wallow in it a while.”_

_Well, he does love to wallow. Chris wishes there was more he could do to help, but he realizes how different they are in this regard. He is a fixer, while Zach is a big believer in just feeling his feelings until they pass away. Maybe that came from therapy. Maybe Chris is doing it wrong. He doesn’t see any reason to change that about himself now though._

_“Alright,” he sighs, but it isn’t an irritated sigh. “Go spend some time with some of your friends or something. Have a drink. Try to unwind. I’ll call you when I get home tonight, okay?”_

_“Mmkay. Don’t forget and pass out like the last time.”_

_“I won’t,” Chris insists, though he probably shouldn’t make such promises, as tired as he’s feeling right now._

_“Bye, baby.”_

_Chris waits until the line goes dead to whisper, “Miss you.” He didn’t want to risk Zach not saying it back._

\----

“Chris, wait up.”

Chris turns and looks over his shoulder and immediately has to suppress the urge to groan. It’s Janine hobbling up the path behind him, and she looks like she means business, which means nothing good for Chris. He has no choice but to stop and wait for her to catch up. It’s not like there is anywhere he can escape to, even if she is just limping along these days. She would hunt him down eventually.

“What’s up?” he asks as genially as he can. “I was just headed up to check on the toma—”

“It can wait, can’t it?” She stops next to him and puts her hands on her hips, looking him up and down like she is sizing him up. Great. This is going to be uncomfortable at best, he can tell already.

“Sure, it can wait. Is something wrong?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Pine?” She takes a lurching step into his space, and he has to fight the urge to step backward. “Can you tell me why _your_ husband is always coming into _my_ cabin to commiserate? Were you planning on sacking up and showing him you still care about him at any point, or…?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Chris goes from bewildered to pissed off in two seconds flat. No way is he going to indulge this shit. He turns to walk away from her—let her chatter at the back of his head if she wants, but he doesn’t need to be lectured by Zach’s new BFF when she has no clue what they’ve been through.

Janine obviously doesn’t plan to be thrown off so easily though, because she puts her hand on his arm and stops him. Chris forgot how strong she is, but the force he has to use to rip away from her serves as a pretty good reminder. Now he is the one sizing her up, trying to decide if she’s the type who just had to stop him one time but will give up if he tries to walk away again. But no, she looks like she wants to have this out. She crosses her arms and cocks her hip and raises an eyebrow at him like she’s daring him to do anything but give in.

“Look, it’s none of your business,” he says, a last-ditch effort to shake her off that he knows isn’t going to work. Apparently Zach has been making it her business. And really, is anything private when you’re living in a commune? Remarkably, he and Zach have the only real drama of the group. It makes sense that people would latch onto it.

“I might scream if I have to see you shoot him one more longing look across the dinner table. Or vice versa. So yeah, it is my business.”

Chris snorts. “Well, if you’re paying that close attention, you should know that I’ve done nothing but show him I care since we got here. And you’d also know he’s not my husband.”

“Bullshit. On both counts.” She heads off his protests with a raised hand. “Listen to me, Chris. I have known that man only about six months, and I’ve already got his number, so I don’t know how you’ve known him for years and yet are still so clueless.”

That actually hurts Chris more than he wants to let on. He looks down and kicks the snow to hide the shock that flashes across his face. She has to be wrong, doesn’t she? Zach is not only the man he loved—loves still—but also the best friend he has ever had in his life. Surely he knows him better than anyone else.

“He adores you,” Janine says, a little softer this time. “He has you on a pedestal.”

“Janine, come on.” He hates how reedy his voice sounds, how it broadcasts his discomfort so loudly. “ _He_ is the one who wanted a divorce. And I already…we already talked about…he doesn’t want to try again.”

“Did he say that?”

“He didn’t say that he does.”

“Have you asked him?” 

Chris doesn’t want to answer that question, but his hesitation is probably an answer in and of itself. 

“Let me tell you something, Chris.” Janine jabs her thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of Chris and Zach’s cabin. “That man has never even considered that someone would want to stick by him for good.”

“Wow, okay, did you just miss the part where I said he’s the one who wanted the divorce?”

“People run for all sorts of reasons. Not the least of which is fear.”

Zach? Afraid? Yeah, right. “It doesn’t matter, because I’ve been chasing after him anyway, and I have nothing to show for it.”

“That’s not the way he tells it.” 

Chris curls his hands into fists. He’s tired of this. After years of trying to solve the riddle that is Zachary Quinto, does Janine really think she can come in here and untwist it for him in one conversation? He doesn’t care what Zach has told her. Zach will say what he thinks he needs to say to get sympathy. Chris bets he didn’t tell her about his infidelity. He bets he didn’t tell her about all the nights he spent trying to escape, going out to bars and clubs and then coming home and making him feel bad for not going with him. 

It’s exhausting. All of this is exhausting. He loves Zach so much, even now, but he is tired of fighting a losing battle. The last thing he needs is someone berating him for not fighting harder.

“Look,” Janine says, before Chris can open his mouth to tell her off again, “I told him I wasn’t going to tell you anything about when we went back to LA, to your house, but I’m tired of watching him suffer, so I’m going to spill. I’ve never seen a man break down the way he did when he saw how smashed up that place was. It was heartbreaking. I thought I would never be able to drag him out of there. And you know what he told me? He told me it was the only place that felt like home to him since he was a kid, since he lost his father. _You_ are the only home he’s had, Chris.”

“That’s not…” Chris shakes his head, swallowing hard. “That’s not true.”

“Then why would he say it?”

That’s a really fucking good question, and Chris’s head is spinning trying to answer it. An even better question would be why Zach never told him that himself. 

“I don’t know, Janine, but—”

The crunch of boots in the snow cuts Chris off. He snaps his mouth shut and turns his head just in time to see Zach coming up the path from the cabins, tugging a beanie down over his ears. He looks up and sees Chris and Janine standing there together, and his expression flickers momentarily, a muscle jumping in his jaw. By the time he reaches them, his face is carefully blank again.

“Hey. Is everything alright?” he asks, his eyes flickering back and forth between them. Chris can imagine how tense they must both look.

“Everything’s peachy.” Chris barely manages not to shoot a glare at Janine. “We were just chatting.”

“I have to go hand this off to Kyle so he can walk the perimeter before dinner,” Janine says, patting the gun at her hip. “I’ll see you two later.”

She limps off before Chris can stop her or offer to go with her, which means he is now stuck here with Zach, with guilt and anger still written all over his face. He looks down at the ground and cups his hands to his face to blow into them, hoping Zach will want to escape the awkwardness and just keep walking. No such luck though. When Chris looks up again, Zach is studying him.

“What did she want?”

“Uhh.” Chris can’t come up with a good lie fast enough. He is left shuffling his feet and licking his lips nervously. He is left with his only option being to tell the truth. “She wanted to talk to me about you. Apparently you’ve been telling her some tales.”

Zach looks stricken for a moment, but then he scowls. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I talk to her sometimes, yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Jesus. _No_ , Zach, I…” Chris is angry, but he also doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. He doesn’t have the energy to fight with Zach anymore, not when things have been starting to look up. “No, I don’t care who you talk to. I think it’s great that you can talk to someone. I just wish you would talk to _me_.”

Zach shakes his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?” A moment ago, he wanted to leave this conversation, but now frustration is making him want to see it through until Zach finally tells him something _real_.

“Because…because…God, I don’t know, Chris. It’s harder with you.” When Chris’s mouth falls open in shock, Zach grimaces, shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. There have always been these things that I want to say to you, but they just…I can’t make them come out. It always ends up twisted.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me how much going back home hurt you?” Chris takes a step closer, wanting so badly to comfort Zach now since he couldn’t comfort him then. “Who would understand more than me? And the same with that picture you’ve been hiding away. I could have been there for you.” 

Zach looks around them, at the silent trees with their snow-covered boughs, at the frozen ground, like he expects someone to pop up out of nowhere and interrupt this private moment. The woods are quiet though, aside from the distant drip of melting snow. They are alone enough that Zach has no good excuse not to talk.

“I don’t want to lean on you like that.” He still isn’t looking at Chris. “I can’t lean on you like that. If…if something happened to you, then where would I be?”

Chris shakes his head in disbelief. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“Yeah, right. Nothing, like getting shot? Nothing, like almost starving yourself to death before getting me out of the house?” 

“What?” Chris breathes, confused.

“Harmony told me. It was one of the first things I heard after I woke up, that you were skin and bones when we got here, and looked like you wanted to die. Do you have any idea what it would have done to me, to know that I made it and I’d lost you?”

“Lost me? Zach…you _left_ me!”

“Only because you didn’t want me there!”

_What?_ Chris is shocked into silence. His breath escapes in quick white puffs, and his face feels hot with…is it anger? It certainly burns in his chest like anger and makes him want to snap. 

Instead, when he speaks, his voice is quiet. “Of course I wanted you there. I loved you, Zach.” No, that’s not right. “I love you.”

Zach shakes his head, like he doesn’t believe him, and that hurts more than anything else. Chris actually puts a hand to his chest, like he expects to find a knife sticking out of it.

“You say that now.” Zach’s voice is almost a whisper. He looks down and then back up. “You should have made me feel it before.”

Chris is paralyzed. He can’t do anything but watch as Zach turns away and walks up the path toward the lodge. Long after he’s gone, he remains rooted to the spot, staring into the trees and wondering if he has been an idiot all along.

\----

_When Chris sees Zach standing at the curb, all of his travel stress disappears. He forgets about the screaming baby on the plane, the paps at baggage claim, and his intense desire to crawl into bed and never get up again. All he wants to do is run to Zach and throw his arms around his neck and never let go. He is convinced that if he started moving right now, it would happen in slow motion, to the swell of emotional music, because the love stirring inside him feels like something straight out of a movie._

_Chris was gone for two weeks, filming pick-ups for a movie that had wrapped right before he and Zach got married. Two weeks is by far the most time they’ve spent apart since they got back from the honeymoon, and already Chris isn’t looking forward to the fact that this will be something they just get used to. ‘I love yous’ from across phone lines and reunions on the sidewalk, in front of people who shouldn’t be allowed to witness such a moment._

_In the end, it’s those other people, and the cameras he can still hear clicking behind him, that keep him from running to Zach like he wants to. He walks at a perfectly normal, steady pace, dragging his suitcase behind him, biting his lip to keep his smile from getting too wide. And when he gets close enough, he leans in for a G-rated peck on the lips, a one-armed hug with an awkward back pat._

_Zach is frowning at him when he pulls away. “Long flight?”_

_“The longest,” Chris sighs. He takes his suitcase around to the back of the car and stuffs it in the trunk, and when he turns to walk to the passenger door, Zach is right there, gripping his chin and dragging him in to kiss him properly. Chris submits to it, even though it’s hard not to think about how the pictures are going to turn up on TMZ before the night is over. He isn’t sure why he even cares, but the need to keep his private life private is reflex at this point. He can’t shake the feeling that no one else deserves to see this part of his life. It’s private. It’s personal._

_“Alright, alright,” Zach says as he pulls away. “I get the picture. Not here.”_

_Chris shoots him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, hon.”_

_Once inside the car, Zach reaches for his hand, squeezing it and then pulling it to his lips. He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Chris, and Chris knows how he feels. If he had his way, he’d never go this long without seeing that face again. But such is life._

_“I missed you,” Zach says. “So much. The house doesn’t feel right without you in it.”_

_“I missed you too.” Chris smiles at him, but he isn’t sure if it properly reaches his eyes. He feels tired and strung out again, the moment of bliss he felt on first seeing Zach fading down into a slow-burning ember of happiness in his chest. He hopes Zach can see it glowing there, all for him, even though he is too exhausted to make it more obvious. Tomorrow, after he has recovered, they can spend all day in bed together, and Chris will show him just how much he missed him, how much he loves him._

_Zach gives his hand one more kiss, then releases it so he can pull away from the curb. On the drive, he fills the silence with idle chatter about what he’s been up to in Chris’s absence, half of it repeating what he told Chris already in one of their many phone calls. Chris doesn’t even care. He just loves the sound of Zach’s voice. He leans he head back against the headrest and watches Zach through half-lidded eyes. He wonders if he’ll ever stop loving him so much it hurts._

\----

Chris is beside himself. Zach won’t talk to him—hardly at all. It’s almost as bad as when they first came to The Camp, when Zach first woke up and was avoiding him all the time. Oliver begs to go sledding a few more times, but Zach always begs off if Chris is going, or he steals the sled and invites Janine or Naomi to go with him instead. He starts going to bed earlier again, showering after dinner and then passing out before Chris gets back to the cabin, so that he has to come in and get undressed in the dark as quietly as possible. Though all of them have less chores to do and more down time, since they are buried under snow, Zach still finds ways to stay out of the cabin most of the day, spending so much time with Henry and the animals that Chris is certain he must be half a vet himself by now.

A few times, Chris does manage to corner him for a minute or two, but he gets exactly what he deserves for it—Zach snarling at him, going for the jugular. It’s unbearable. For two whole weeks, Chris walks around like a zombie, choking on his own heart, which has taken up permanent residence in his throat. His shoulders are carrying around the weight of a failed marriage, which he now knows he wasn’t blameless for. As he replays past moments over and over in his head, it only becomes clearer—so clear that he doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before. He was so sure that it had to be obvious to Zach how much he needed and wanted him by his side, but when he looks back on it, he realizes he never said anything like that out loud. Not when Zach walked out. Not when he asked for the divorce. Chris was heartbroken, but he was angry too, and anger made him give up the fight too easily. Even when Zach was replacing him with other people, other things, he never told him how much it hurt or how jealous it made him. He always reacted like a sulky child who was losing a favorite toy, rather than a man who couldn’t bear to lose his husband. He always just expected Zach to know. But how could he?

Finally, Chris reaches the end of his rope. It came as a shock to him—that Zach was feeling just as neglected as him all along—but now that he knows, he can’t think of anything but how to make it right. He _needs_ to make it right. It can’t be too late. He didn't fight for him enough before, but he can fight now. 

He begs off doing dishes, switching days with Kyle, and sneaks back to the cabin a couple minutes after Zach does. His heart is pounding as he approaches the shower, where he can hear Zach moving around. The rudimentary shower stall that Chris built is on a raised wooden platform and has two little “rooms” separated by curtains made of tarpaulin. The outer room is for undressing in privacy, and the inner room is where the camp shower is suspended. Though he steps carefully and draws back the first curtain as slowly as he can, he announces his presence to Zach at once.

“Chris?” Zach calls, his voice confused. “I’m in here.”

Chris doesn’t answer him, which buys him enough time to quickly shuck his shirt and step out of his shoes. Zach’s head peaks around the inner curtain just as he’s pushing his pants down over his hips and letting them fall to the floor. 

“I said I’m in here,” Zach repeats.

“I know.” 

Chris steps forward and Zach steps back, which is odd, in the grand scheme of things. It’s usually Zach who is the aggressor. It’s usually Chris being backed up against a wall. This is Chris turning over a new leaf though, and though his stomach is doing flips as he closes the curtain behind him, he isn’t about to back down now. 

The space is small, and they are already too close. The water is turned off, but Zach’s skin is already wet, little droplets of water glistening in his chest hair and clinging to his chin. His gaze skims down Chris’s body before he seems to realize what he’s doing and his eyes snap up again. “What are you doing?”

Chris gets up in Zach’s space and takes his face in his hands. “Making you listen to me.”

The kiss is frighteningly one-sided for a few moments, just Chris’s lips pressed to Zach’s closed mouth. Despite how tense Zach is under his hands, Chris is determined to persevere, to pour as much emotion into this one awkward kiss as he can. His fingers dig desperately into Zach’s jaw, and then he scratches his fingernails around to the back of his neck, where he grips him to pull him closer. That seems to be the tipping point, because Zach sucks in a breath and his mouth relaxes enough for Chris to align their lips and press against him in an attempt to make him take the control back. Chris needs to be able to offer himself up right now, to prove to Zach how much he wants this, wants him.

Zach makes a little frustrated sound in the back of his throat, and his hands go to Chris’s hips. He surges forward, peddling Chris backward until he is the one with his back to the wall, and then he breaks the kiss, searching Chris’s face with dark eyes.

“This is your plan?” he huffs. “Seducing me in a tiny shower?”

“It was the only place I could think of where you couldn’t immediately run out on me again.” Chris strokes his fingers through the damp hair at the back of Zach’s head, hoping he can’t feel how his hands are shaking. “I miss you, Zach. It’s killing me, how much I miss you. I need you to see that.”

Zach’s expression darkens, his fingers tightening on Chris’s hips to the point of bruising. “Don’t fuck with me now, Chris.”

Chris tugs Zach in until their foreheads are resting together, and only then does he notice that Zach is shaking too. His breathing is uneven; Chris can feel it on his face, a warm contrast to the chilly evening air. The space between their bodies is warm too, and even though nervousness has kept Chris soft until now, he can feel Zach hardening against his thigh.

“I’m not fucking with you,” he murmurs. “I hate that you could even think that. I hate that you could think for one second that I could live without you.” He slides his hands down to Zach’s shoulders, then drags his fingertips down his chest, feeling the goosebumps raise on his skin in the wake of his touch. “Please, Zach. I’m so sorry. I—”

Zach lets out a sob and presses their mouths together again, cutting off the flow of words streaming from Chris’s mouth. He wraps one arm all the way around his waist and presses their bodies together from the chest down, like he wants to fuse them together. That would be just fine with Chris, if Zach could never run away from him again. 

The kiss is thorough and perfect, everything Chris has been missing. Zach brings one hand up to cup the side of his face and position him how he wants to, then proceeds to steal all the breath right out of his lungs. His tongue searches the inside of Chris’s mouth with possessive fervor, and his stubble rasps against Chris’s lower lip. The familiarity of it is heartbreaking. Chris feels like he is being resurrected from the dead, like these are the first sensations he has felt in years and years, and they just happen to be the ones he was missing the most.

“I got myself ready for you,” he whispers against Zach’s mouth. Earlier, before dinner, he sneaked back to the cabin with a stolen tub of Vaseline and fingered himself open, unsure all the while whether he was scared Zach would walk in on him or hoping he would. 

Zach sucks in a shocked breath and lets his fingers trail down to probe between Chris’s legs, then slip inside him. The sound Chris makes is closer to a whimper than anything else, and he leans in to bury his face in Zach’s neck to hide the wave of emotion that threatens to overcome him. But Zach isn’t having any of that. He reaches up with his free hand and tips Chris’s head back so he can watch his face.

“Talk to me,” he says, even as he pushes his fingers deeper and threatens to rob Chris of all coherent thought. “I want to know what you’re feeling.”

After so much time feeling like his emotions have been pushed aside, it’s scary to even consider opening up to Zach now and giving him the chance to hurt his heart again. But Chris knows that if he wants to fix this, he has to take a chance.

“I missed this,” he gasps, trying to push back against Zach’s fingers. “Not just…feeling you like this, but being this close to you.”

Zach noses in behind his ear and sucks on his neck. “You sure about that?” The words are a sharp contrast to the warmth pooling in Chris’s gut. “It wasn’t all good, Chris. It wouldn’t all be good the second time around.”

“I’ll try harder if you will.” Chris closes his eyes as he trails his fingers down Zach’s back. “I need you so much, and it’s scary, and I let myself get so afraid that I pushed you away. And I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Zach says, dropping his forehead to Chris’s shoulder. Chris doesn’t want his apologies though, as much as he would have wanted them a few weeks ago. All that matters now is that they find their way back to each other.

Zach tugs on his hip until he gets the picture and turns around, bracing his hands against the wall. All of a sudden, he feels so empty, like there’s a great cavern inside him that he’s been too scared to explore, because he knows how Zach-shaped it would be. But Zach is going to fill it up now. He pushes in with three fingers, twisting and probing like he’s inspecting Chris’s handiwork. Then, with a satisfied hum, he pulls his hand away and replaces it with the head of his cock, but he doesn’t push inside yet.

“You okay?” he asks, running one soothing palm up Chris’s back. It’s not until that moment that Chris realizes there have been sounds falling from his lips—little whines and needy moans.

“ _Please_.” Begging brings him no shame. Zach deserves to hear him beg a little. A lot, maybe.

Zach doesn’t seem to need any more begging from him now though, because he is already sliding inside, pressing in until there is nowhere left to go and he is touching Chris everywhere, inside and out, draped across his back and tonguing the side of his neck and then dragging his chin around for a sloppy, off-center kiss. Chris pushes back against him, making both of them groan. 

It’s nice just being still and feeling so full of Zach, but when Zach starts moving, it’s better. Chris didn’t give this to anyone else. When Zach left him, he didn’t go out on the pull, and even if he had, he doubts he would have let anyone else have this much of him. He knows it wouldn’t be as good with anyone else. Nothing is ever as good without Zach. He doesn’t care how much of a sap he is for thinking it—nothing makes his body hum like the affection in Zach’s fingertips or the softness of his voice when it caresses Chris’s name.

Zach fucks him slow and deep, neither racing toward the end nor giving Chris time to ease into it. He carries him right to the edge and leaves him dangling there, sucking on the juncture of his neck and thumbing at his nipples but never reaching down between his legs to give him some relief. Chris isn’t complaining though. If this lasted forever, he would be perfectly content. He can ride this razor edge of sweet agony as long as Zach wants, if only it means they get to stay like this, close like this. 

When Zach finally does reach down and encircle him with his hand, it doesn’t take long. Chris comes with a sigh on his lips, and he clings to every wonderful word of praise and affection that Zach murmurs into his ear as he drums his own orgasm into Chris’s body. They stay there, with Zach wrapped around Chris, holding him tight, for a long time. Outside, it has turned full dark, but in here, if Chris is trembling, it has nothing to do with the cold.

Eventually, they move to get cleaned up, though that mostly means making out under the trickle of the shower while they idly scrub at each other’s skin. When the water runs out, they towel dry and pull on their clothes and return to the cabin with Zach hot on Chris’s heels, like he can no longer bear to be too far away from him. Before Chris can open his mouth to ask the awkward question on the tip of his tongue, Zach reaches out to strip off his clothes and then push him down onto his bed before climbing in with him and pulling him into his arms.

Chris is aware of nothing but the way Zach’s ribcage expands and contracts, expands and contracts, his breath warm on Chris’s neck—warm and real and living.


	9. Chapter 9

_”Let’s get married, Chris.”_

_Chris just got fucked so hard he can’t even remember whether they’re in California or New York right now, so it takes those words more than a few seconds to settle into his fuzzy brain and make some semblance of sense. Even then, it’s only the kind of sense where Chris understands what the words mean, not the kind where he understands why Zach is saying them. “Huh?”_

_“I want to marry you.” Zach is a mess. His upper lip glistens with sweat, his hair is shiny and falling into his face, and he is more than a little winded, flopped half on top of Chris because he couldn’t be bothered to roll to the side. He looks serious though. He isn’t smirking or even pursing his lips like he does when he’s fighting a smirk. His fingers are brushing affectionately across Chris’s hipbone, his thumb swiping through an errant splash of come. “You know, settle down. Tie the knot…shit, I can’t think of any more euphemisms.” His damp forehead falls to Chris’s shoulder, and he laughs, a little hysterically. “I’m just saying, we should. Get married.”_

_He’s just saying. Well then._

_Chris shrugs Zach off and pushes himself up onto his elbows, staring up at the ceiling as he tries to swallow down a reflexive wave of fear. It actually hadn’t occurred to him that this relationship was headed toward marriage. He loves Zach with all his heart, he does—more than he has loved anyone else in his life. He has no plans to ever let go of him if he can help it. But something about the word ‘marriage’ stirs up uncomfortable feelings, feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty. This part—flying across the country to see each other, spending all their time in bed—is easy and familiar. But marriage? That’s uncharted territory. Scary territory._

_And really? This is really how Zach is going to ask him?_

__Is _he even asking him?_

_“Are you asking me?” Chris asks. “Like, right now. Are you asking me, or is this just a hypothetical someday thing?”_

_There must be something weird in his voice, because Zach’s expression closes off and he starts to fidget. He scoots back a little so he can see Chris’s face, but then he looks down away from him and picks at a loose thread on the comforter. Chris swears, if Zach actually asks him right now without even looking him in the eyes—_

_But Zach does look up again, and when he does, his eyes are swimming with tears. Chris makes an alarmed noise and sways forward, going to cradle Zach’s face in his hands, but Zach pulls away, just out of his reach._

_“I know I’m doing this all wrong,” he says, his voice thick. “I know you deserve better. Fanfare and…I don’t know, fireworks. White doves. A choir of angels. I haven’t even bought a ring or anything, because I didn’t know if you’d want that. I thought that might freak you out.”_

_The ring would have been the last thing on a long list of freak-outs, but Chris bites his tongue and reaches out to squeeze Zach’s hand so he’ll be encouraged enough to finish._

_“And I know it hasn’t been that long. And I know you’ve never talked about wanting to get married…or even moving in together. But…I love you so much, Chris. I didn’t even know it was possible to love a person this much. I miss you when you’re not here, and I miss you even when you_ are _here, because I know it’s only a matter of time until you go away again. I just…I want to keep you. Here. With me. Forever.”_

_Chris is a complete lost cause. Before Zach even finishes talking, his eyes are filling with tears and his throat is closing up. “Are you sure?” he chokes out. “Are you sure, Zach, because—”_

_Zach’s expression darkens, and he silences Chris by pushing him back down to the bed and kissing him soundly, a kiss that tastes of love and devotion and, yes, certainty. When he pulls away, he strokes his fingers down the side of Chris’s face, then smooths his hair off his forehead. “I’ve been sure for a long time. It just took a while for me to figure out how to ask you.”_

_Chris lets out a nervous little chuckle. “And in bed after fucking my brains out seemed like the obvious choice?”_

_“I wanted to butter you up,” Zach jokes, but it’s clear he’s just trying to cover up his own vulnerability. He sighs and shakes his head before trying again: “You’re so…It just came out.”_

_Now is the time to give Zach an answer. He can tell Zach is waiting for it, and he knows what he wants to say, but the word sticks painfully in his throat, like a shard of glass. He knows forcing it out will hurt a lot less than keeping it in though, even if he’s scared to death._

_“Yes.” The word comes out as a gasp. “Yes, yes, let’s do it.”_

_Chris can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Zach cry, and that includes Spock tears. He cries now though, tears spilling silently from his eyes as he leans in and presses their foreheads together, stroking Chris’s face like he’s something precious and unbelievable. Chris is still scared—his heart is still pounding—but he would so much rather be scared with Zach than comfortable alone._

\----

This thing that is blooming—blooming again—between him and Zach is so essential and so friable that Chris wishes he could put it inside a glass case where nothing and no one could so much as breathe on it, not even him. Especially not him. If anyone could screw this up, it would be Chris, who already did a pretty bang-up job with it before, and who can feel in himself now the kind of desperation that almost ensures he’ll do something stupid before all is said and done. It is a catch-22 if ever there was one. Fear is what tore them apart, fear is what is putting them back together, and fear could easily break them up again. How are they going to escape this cycle?

The sad truth is there is nothing Chris can do to protect it. They still live in the world they live in, which is a hell of a lot colder and harder than the one they lived in when things fell apart. If they couldn’t make this work when they were wealthy and comfortable and had all their basic Maslow needs met, it’s going to be that much more difficult now. But Chris is more committed to this than he is to anything else. Just surviving isn’t worth it. 

“Do you think…should we talk?” he asks and he trails his fingers along the bare arm Zach has wrapped around him. They are spooned up together in bed in the dark, Zach curled around Chris’s body. For the past several days, they haven’t done much but have sex—between chores and before bed. Chris knows that Zach is probably using physical intimacy to deflect away from emotional intimacy, but he hasn’t wanted to push him too hard, afraid he will push him away again if he does. Eventually they have to face this though. It might feel too fragile to push on, but it’s also too fragile to relegate to something they do in the dark, in secret, as a distraction. 

“Talk about what?” Zach asks, skimming his fingers feather-light over Chris’s stomach like he hopes to distract him. But Chris isn’t even close to being able to get it up again tonight, and even if he was, he can be tenacious when he needs to be.

“Talk about us.” Chris considers rolling over so he can look at Zach’s face, but this way is less confrontational. “About what went wrong. About how not to do it again.”

“Chris,” Zach sighs. “I don’t think that’s really how this works. That we just pick up where we left off, except with self-led marriage counseling.”

Chris tries hard not to tense up. “So, what then? Start over from the beginning? Because I don’t need you to fuck me in half a dozen countries to figure out I want to be with you this time.”

“That’s good, because we couldn’t do that if we wanted to. Unless you want to swim across the Atlantic.”

The flippancy in Zach’s voice rubs Chris the wrong way. He counts backward from five in his head, but that doesn’t keep him from snarking back: “There’s always South America.”

Zach takes his arm back, and Chris can feel him sit up. He flops over onto his back so he can look at him finally, but Zach is facing forward, his legs stretched out in front of him, his shoulders hunched.

“I don’t know what it is you expect, Chris,” he says quietly. He runs his hands over his face. “If this gets fucked up again, we can’t get away from each other. We’re stuck here.”

“So, what then? You think we can just…keep it casual? That’s not going to work.”

Zach glances over his shoulder at him, then seems to decide that was a bad idea and looks away again, toward the little sliver of light filtering in through the gap in the ratty blankets they’re using as curtains. Even now, as much as he knows it would be a mistake, Chris feels the urge to fold in on himself, to shrug off this conversation that he started and tell Zach they can do whatever he wants, however he wants to do it. The scraps that fall from his table are better than nothing at all. But he promised himself he would fight this time, so he’s going to fight, until Zach either lets him in or shuts the door completely.

“Do you want to go away from here?” he asks. “Do you want to get in the car and just drive until we find someplace that feels safe to you? I’ll go wherever you want to go, Zach.”

This time when Zach looks back at him, he holds his gaze. “No. No, I…it feels safe here, most of the time. I think it’s good that we have other people to fall back on.”

“What then? What is it you want?” Tentatively, Chris pushes himself up on one elbow and reaches out to rest his fingertips on Zach’s back.

Zach stiffens, and Chris fears that he’s going to jump up off the bed and run out of the room. He holds his breath in anticipation of it, and just barely manages not to grab onto Zach’s arm to hold him there, which would only spook him more. Finally, Zach lets out an exhausted breath and shifts around, then flops unexpectedly back down next to Chris, stretching out beside him and laying his head on Chris’s shoulder. 

“I’m terrible at this,” he says. His hand grips Chris’s hip like he needs something to ground him. “You know that about me.”

Chris nods; he does know that. He remembers when Zach came back to his place after Leonard’s funeral, remembers Zach burying his head in his hands and admitting that, though he was immeasurably grateful to have known Leonard, he couldn’t seem to silence the little part inside of him that said ‘See? This is what happens when you let someone in.’ At that time, and during every other time they talked about Zach’s abandonment issues, Chris thought he understood, but now he knows that he has huge blind spots. He always felt heartbroken for Zach, and he would have done anything to keep him from that kind of pain again, but that didn’t mean he really got what it meant to feel the way Zach feels or to struggle with the things Zach struggles with. If he had, he would have understood why Zach was pulling away from him. 

“Do you know that I can’t even remember the last thing I said to my mom?” Zach says. “I remember talking to her after I saw you at the lawyer’s office that last time, and I remember most of our conversation, but I don’t remember the last thing I said to her. She was upset over the divorce and was telling me I should try to make it work, so I was short with her. Annoyed with her. I don’t remember if I told her I loved her or not.” He takes a deep breath and holds Chris a little tighter. “I kept thinking about that right after you were shot, when I was worried I might lose you. Because I couldn’t remember the last thing I’d said to you either. I knew I was pissed you’d weaseled your way into the supply run, and…I remember you telling me to be careful, telling me you were worried, but I knew I hadn’t said any of that to you. That was the way it could have ended.”

Chris doesn’t know what to say. He strokes his fingers up and down Zach’s back and holds his breath, waiting for him to go on.

“Everything ends, Chris.” Zach is whispering now. “Everyone leaves. You will too, eventually, whether you mean to or not.”

“Or you will.” Chris wraps his arms tight around Zach’s shoulders, like he can keep him there that way. It is a relief when Zach cuddles closer rather than struggling to get away. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t stop feeling the way I feel. I don’t want to.”

Zach doesn’t answer him. Instead, he rolls between Chris’s legs and frames his face with his forearms, pushing his fingers into his hair and watching him intently. Chris lets him look, lets him find whatever it is he wants to find. He is done trying to cover up his weak spots so Zach can’t poke at them. If Zach wants to poke, Chris will take the pain, comforted at least that it’s something honest. 

When Zach kisses him, it doesn’t feel like a response, but it does feel like a start. If they have to dismantle this wall one brick at a time, so be it. It just so happens they have all the time in the world and nothing better to do.

\----

“So, how are you and Zach?” Naomi asks from her usual spot in the corner of the kitchen. Chris stops dicing tomatoes and turns to give her a look, but she just gazes serenely back at him, her fingers continuing to push and pull the needle through the pair of jeans she’s mending.

“Does everyone know our business?” he mutters as he turns away again and gets back to chopping.

“Yes,” Vera cuts in. She brushed by him on the way to throw another log into the wood stove. “And we all think you’re both idiots.”

Chris pouts, but remains facing away so she can’t see it. The only thing worse than everyone knowing too much about his private life is being made fun of for his reaction to it. From where he’s standing, he’s been doing the best he can. 

“Not funny,” he says shortly.

“Not joking,” she shoots back.

Finally, he makes himself look at her. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

Vera slams the oven door shut and turns to him with her hands on her hips. Sometimes she reminds him of his own grandmother—her no-nonsense attitude, her quick wit, her subtle grace. It occurs to him that he doesn’t know what she did when he was younger, but he can easily imagine her as an actress. Or maybe a model. A dancer. Something that commanded attention, like she is commanding Chris’s attention now, staring him down until he puts down the knife for fear of accidentally chopping off his fingers.

“You don’t see how it’s any of our business, huh?” Vera glances toward the table, where Oliver is in his own little world, rolling a toy car back and forth, making _vroom-vroom_ noises with his mouth. When she looks back at Chris, she holds up her left hand, pointing to the white-gold ring on her finger. “We’ve all lost our people. You still have one of yours. I think that is more than enough for us to have an opinion on your stupidity.”

Chris looks past her to Naomi, who gives him a sheepish shrug, like she regrets bringing it up. “Just listen to her Chris. I’ll bet she knows more about marriage than you do.”

“You’ve got that right.” Vera leans her hip against the counter and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but at some point the world started giving young people the impression that love is easy. You find someone you click with, and then you ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. But that is just…it’s bull, is what it is. The ride off into the sunset is the beginning, not the end. Marriage is a journey, not a destination.”

She isn’t telling him anything he hasn’t learned in the past year—too little too late. Somehow he doubts that she has equally sage advice on what to do if the other half of your heart is determined to keep a wall up, for “safety” reasons.

In the end, he doesn’t have to find out whether there are more words of wisdom or not, because a moment later the door swings open and Zach peeks his head in. 

“Who wants to see some baby goats?”

Oliver is quickest to jump off his chair and run for the door. Naomi rises with a smile on her face to follow him. Chris glances at Vera.

“You go ahead,” she says, waving him away with a meaningful look. “I’ll finish dinner and head down to have a look-see later.”

He doesn’t really want to argue with her, so he whistles Skunk out of the corner where he’s dozing and then follows the other two out the door, casting a shy smile Zach’s way as he passes him. They all walk down to the barn together, Naomi and Oliver going first, hand in hand, with Skunk trotting alongside, and Zach and Chris trailing after them, their elbows brushing. Chris daydreams the whole way about grabbing Zach’s hand, but he never does it. 

The plaintive bleats are audible even before they make their way up to the fence, and Chris has an anticipatory smile on his face as he peers into the pen. Their miniature goat herd has grown by four—two little brown fluffballs, one black-and-white, and one brown-and-white. The kids are toddling around after their mothers on slightly unsteady legs and occasionally wandering off to explore a little wider, getting used to their surroundings. They are almost unbearably adorable. Their cries are feeble and tooth-rotting. Chris knows he is grinning like an idiot, and he doesn’t even care. 

“God, they are _cute_ ,” Naomi sighs. 

Henry is in the pen checking out the mothers, making sure none are showing any signs of complications. He looks up and grins at them, looking every bit like a proud father.

“Have I mentioned lately how much better this is than taking care of socialites’ purse dogs?” he says. “You guys can come in if you want.”

Chris doesn’t need to be told twice. He holds open the gate for Oliver and Naomi to slip in ahead of him, then steps inside with Zach on his heels. The kids seem more wary than curious at first, but once their mothers come over to say hello, they stumble after them and start investigating, their little tails vibrating as they mill around everyone’s legs. Oliver isn’t shy. He walks right up to the nearest baby and starts stroking its ears with his tiny hands. Skunk isn’t shy either. He sniffs around them with interest, until one tries to bump heads with him and he skitters away, only to return again and glare at it with his mean little old man face. 

“They’re all healthy,” Zach says. He looks a lot like a proud father too, and it is more endearing than it has any right to be. He bends down and scoops the black-and-white baby into his arms, then turns toward Chris with a smile. Chris takes the silent invitation to come closer and stroke his fingers across its fuzzy little head.

“Are we naming them?” Naomi asks. She is squatting down in the middle of the goats now, and one of the kids is trying to climb up on her knee like it’s a mini mountain. It keeps slipping off and nearly ending up on its back, but that isn’t keeping it from trying again.

“It’s best not to get attached,” Henry says, not unkindly. He stands up and brushes the dirt and straw off his pants. “We don’t know which of these little ones will end up being food.”

“God,” Zach groans. “Do you _have_ to talk about that right now?”

Chris grimaces a little too, but he doesn’t let it ruin this moment for him. It might be transient, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Babies don’t stay babies; everything grows and eventually dies. He can’t pretend that he’s completely Zen about it, but if he has learned one thing recently, it’s that you can’t start missing a thing before it’s even gone. 

When he looks up at Zach again, Zach is looking back at him, smiling softly. “I love that look,” he says, his voice lowered so the words are just for Chris. “The one you get when you’re thinking real hard.”

“Yeah? You should try it sometime,” Chris teases back. Zach chortles at him, then bends to put the goat in his arms back down on the ground. When he straightens up again, he slings an arm around Chris’s shoulders. It’s a little bit awkward, like Zach is trying too hard not to let any gravity seep into the press of their bodies, but Chris leans into it anyway and wraps his arm around Zach’s waist to keep him close. They stand there for a long time, watching Oliver and Skunk play with the new babies. They stand there until Chris feels stiff and dull pain flares through his shoulder, but still he doesn’t want to move. He tilts his head to the side, rests it against Zach, and holds on tight.

\----

The snow melts away in fits and starts. One day the sun will come out and reduce everything down to muddy piles of slush, and the next morning they will wake up to a fresh blanket. By the end of March, they are no longer getting much precipitation of any kind—not snow or even freezing rain—and the visible patches of ground grow larger every day.

It’s Chris’s cue to start checking on the garden again. He walks the muddy perimeter, checking to see what has survived the winter and what has refused to come back. Miraculously, their little tangerine tree has proved to be hardier than expected. Chris wrapped it in a blanket every night, and that seems to have done the job of saving it from the frost. After a little bit of pruning, he expects it to bounce back better than ever. His stomach growls at the thought of having fresh fruit again—tangerines as well as strawberries and blackberries. They have been on serious rations for the past few weeks. Chris is hungry all the time. But it’ll get better. Soon.

He is on his hands and knees in the mud, checking on the onions, when he hears the squelch of boots coming up the path and turns to see Zach approaching. For the first time in months, he’s out without his hat on, and the breeze is blowing his hair across his forehead. He hasn’t been as diligent about keeping it trimmed lately, and it has gotten long on top—the way Chris likes it. More to run his fingers through. And he has had his fingers in it a lot lately, determined to make up for all the lost time, all the times he wanted so badly to touch and couldn’t. 

“Don’t you think we’ve been doing laundry enough lately?” Zach says as he stops on the other side of the short fence and leans against it, looking disapprovingly at the mud all over Chris’s jeans. The innuendo makes Chris blush. They certainly have been dirtying up the sheets more often, but spending the extra time at the washboard is a small price to pay.

“If you know a way to garden without getting dirty, I’m all ears.” Chris grins as he says it, and Zach is grinning right back at him. This same exchange would have been laden with annoyance a few months ago, but winds are changing in more ways than one. Just the fact that Zach willingly sought him out at all is evidence of that.

“Nah, you’re the expert. If dirt on your knees helps you grow food, then by all means.”

Chris chuckles and slowly gets to his feet, brushing himself off as best he can. “It looks like everything has come back okay. In a couple more weeks I’ll plant some of the seeds that Manny and I found. We’ll have a lot more variety next winter hopefully.”

In the past couple weeks, they have been eating a lot of eggs and tomatoes and potatoes and not a whole lot else. But now they are milking the goats again, and between that and the renewed produce from the garden, they will be eating as much like kings as people living in a post-apocalyptic world could be. Or at least, Chris hopes they will be.

“That’s good. I never thought I’d get tired of tomatoes, and yet.” Zach looks over the garden for a moment, and then his eyes rest on Chris again. “Well, don’t mind me. You can keep working. I just don’t have anything to do and figured I could keep you company.”

It’s ridiculous how that makes Chris’s heart flip in his chest. Sometimes it feels like he is falling in love with Zach all over again, like they are back in the early days of their relationship when Chris felt like a teenager with an all-consuming crush. 

“Company sounds nice,” Chris says with a smile. He picks up the shears and walks over to the tangerine tree, even though it’s tempting to stop working and just look at Zach. Things are not perfect between them yet, and ostensibly taking his attention off Zach has always been a good way to get him to speak up.

“Hey, umm.” Zach sounds uncertain, so Chris doesn’t turn to look at him, forcing himself to keep working instead. “You remember when we had your parents over for Sunday dinner that one time?”

Chris smiles and nods, glancing over at Zach and then quickly away. “The time you forgot to put garlic in the spaghetti sauce?”

“Yeah. And it was bland as all get-out, but they just sat there and ate it, like nothing was wrong. Even _you_ couldn’t eat it, and I’ve seen you pick food up off the ground.”

“Hey, five second rule,” Chris says, pointing the sheers at him meaningfully. Then, his smile fades a little bit. “Where are you going with this, Zach?”

“I just…” He trails off, like even he doesn’t know where he was going. Maybe that’s okay though. If Zach wants to ramble at him, if he thinks it will make things better somehow, then Chris is willing to listen, no matter how much it hurts. 

“Remember when we went to your mom’s house for Christmas that first year?” he asks tentatively, searching Zach’s face for evidence that this is what he wanted. Zach brightens immediately, his smile widening, and leans more heavily against the fence, until it groans under his weight.

“And her heater was broken the first two nights. We had to put like ten blankets on the bed.”

“Poor Margo. She felt so bad. I half expected her to show up in the middle of the night and point hairdryers at us or something.”

“Italian women take hosting very seriously.” Zach’s smile goes a little soft. “She loved you so much, you know.”

“I know,” Chris says, because he does. She made sure of that. “I loved her too.”

This makes him sad. There’s no other word for it. He could reach deep into his vocabulary and pull out dozens of synonyms for grief, including some in French and Spanish, but the truth is that there is no poetry in something like this. He’s just sad. 

“Do you think it’ll get better?” Zach asks. “Or worse?”

Chris doesn’t know if Zach is talking about the pain or about everything, but it doesn’t matter, because the answer is the same. “I think that depends on us.”

He lets the shears drop to the ground and walks over to where Zach is standing, with the fence between them. It is a flimsy thing, but filling the gaps with chicken wire has done the job of keeping the wildlife out of the garden. When Chris places his forearms alongside Zach’s and leans into it, it creaks and knocks Zach slightly off-balance, making him plant his feet and chuckle. Chris silently thanks every god whose name he can think of that Zach isn’t moving away. He drops his head to his shoulder and breathes him in.

“What do you think, Zach?” he asks into the sweaty skin of Zach’s neck. “Better or worse?”

Zach’s hand wraps around the back of his neck, his thumb stroking through the hair there. “I don’t know, baby,” he sighs. “I really don’t know.”


	10. Chapter 10

_It’s nearing 1:00 AM when they stumble through Zach’s front door. Chris planned to stay at The Bowery while he finished up a little business he has in New York before heading home, but Zach insisted on him staying here instead, and he didn’t have the willpower to say no. He is still dreading the fact that he’s going back to LA soon, and that he doesn’t know when he’ll see Zach again. Any excuse to soak up more time with him is a good one._

_“I’m dead on my feet,” Zach whines as he drops his bag by the door and starts toeing off his shoes. Chris leans against the wall in the foyer and watches him as he stretches his arms over his head and stifles a yawn. “I feel like I haven’t been home in an eternity.”_

_Chris doesn’t miss home at all right now. He does miss staying in the same place for longer than a couple days at a time though. He misses a sense of permanence. It feels like he’s been running constantly for…the last five years at least, and he is starting to feel like he’s losing some of his substance, turning into a wisp that blows around on the wind._

_But it’s over now. The press tour is over, and there is nothing brewing for him on the horizon. He has no clue what he’s going to do with himself. He isn’t sure he likes the idea of the free time that stretches out in front of him, but that doesn’t explain why he made sure to keep his schedule clear for a while. Some part of him expected to feel hungover after all the jetting around the world, but mostly he just feels empty. Hollow._

_Zach notices him watching him and cocks his head to the side, smiling. His eyes have an odd sheen to them in the dark room. His gaze lingers on Chris’s mouth. “Come on, Pine,” he says, stepping forward to take his hand. “Let’s go collapse. You look like you’re barely standing.”_

_The weird thing is that Chris doesn’t feel tired at all. If he’s barely standing, it’s because of emotional rather than physical exhaustion. He slept practically the whole plane ride anyway, woke up with his head on Zach’s shoulder and a blanket tucked up under his chin. The way Zach looked at him then is burned into his brain. His eyes were so tender. He had smoothed Chris’s hair back and kissed his temple and held his hand under the blanket as the plane touched down on the tarmac. His eyes are tender now too, a far cry from the predatory simmer Chris became used to in their stolen hotel-room moments. When Zach looks at him like this, he wants to do dangerous things, say dangerous things._

_Like this: “I don’t want to go to bed.”_

_Confusion passes across Zach’s face, quickly followed by understanding. But as soon as he speaks, it’s clear Zach understood him wrong. “It’s okay. I’ll make up the guest room.”_

_Chris reaches out to grasp Zach’s arm as he starts to move past him. “That’s not what I meant.”_

_“What did you mean?”_

_“I mean I don’t want to sleep.” He pulls Zach closer and wraps his arm around his waist, willing him to relax. “I want to stay up and talk. Or…maybe just look at you. I want to make the most of my time while I’m here.”_

_Zach looks a little skeptical, which sort of breaks Chris’s heart. Someone should tell Zach that he’s particularly beautiful when he isn’t hiding behind a thin veneer of desperate pretension. Someone should tell him that the soft, vulnerable parts of him are just as appealing as the intense and prickly ones. Chris would tell him that right now, but he’s too afraid. What if he’s misreading that look in Zach’s eyes?_

_“I just want more time,” Chris whispers, laying his head against Zach’s collarbone._

_“What if…” Zach starts, then pauses to suck in a shaky breath. “What if we _could_ have more time?”_

_Those words could mean a lot of things, so Chris can’t bring himself to trust that they mean what he wants them to mean. He takes a moment to listen to the sound of Zach’s heartbeat, just in case this is the last time, then finally pushes himself back so he can see Zach’s face again. “Do you want that?”_

_Zach’s vulnerability slips away all at once, and suddenly his gaze is fire. He pushes Chris flat against the wall and then cradles his face in his hands, sweeping his thumbs across his cheekbones. “Of course I want that. Of course I do. Chris…” There is that shaky breath again. “Chris, I love you.”_

_Chris squeezes his eyes shut and swallows hard, trying to steady himself. It’s no use. He has a feeling he’ll never be steady again. When he opens his eyes and looks at Zach, he is smiling at him, like he already knows everything Chris can’t bring himself to say. Chris smiles back and surges forward off the wall so he can wrap his arms around Zach as tightly as possible, and feel Zach’s arms wrapped around him._

_“Thank God,” he whispers into Zach’s neck. “I was hoping you did.”_

\----

Chris found Zach’s ring when he was picking through the wreckage at Joe’s place, sitting on top of the dresser in the room Zach had been staying in. At the time, he didn’t even have to think twice about slipping it into his pocket, even though he doubted that it would ever find its way onto Zach’s finger again.

For months and months, it has been hidden away inside one of the pockets in the suitcase, wrapped inside an old sock. When Chris took it out again, it was still as shiny as ever, which seems wrong somehow. A ring that spent that long away from its rightful home should dull or tarnish. He slipped it back into his pocket so it would be there when he’s ready for it, and he has taken to slipping two fingers in to check on it, to pet it and feel its hardness and realness, to remind himself that it’ll be there when the time comes.

“What does it really matter, whether he wears it or not?” he asks Janine one evening, leaning against a tree outside her cabin and twisting the ring in his fingers. “What does being married even mean now?”

She squints at him, then looks up at the sky, at the glittering stars winking into existence. Her limp has subsided a little, and she no longer gets tired standing for long periods of time, so she has gone back to walking the perimeter with her sidearm at night. Tonight Chris happened to catch her before she got too far. 

“I don’t think we have to start redefining words just because the world has changed,” she says. “It’s not like marriage is an invention of the information age.”

“Yeah, because the modern concept of marriage totally matches the ancient one,” he says sarcastically. He slips the ring onto the fourth finger of his right hand, then pulls it off again. It’s too big for him and moves easily. He wonders if it will still fit Zach’s finger. “The extra dick in the equation notwithstanding, we aren’t talking about exchanging two goats for his hand.”

“So what do you want me to say, Chris? That you should chuck the ring in the river and forget all about it?” Janine shakes her head at him, then twists to lean next to him against the tree, their shoulders pressed together. It pains him sometimes how much she reminds him of Zoe. She has a rougher exterior and slightly sharper edges, but she isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, and she is always ready with the kind of advice that is hard to hear but scarily shrewd. He is glad she has softened significantly toward him and no longer seems to see him as the guy needlessly breaking Zach’s heart. They may never be friends the way she and Zach are friends, but Chris isn’t really looking for a friend like that anyway. 

“What were your wedding vows like?” she asks him. “Did you write your own?”

Chris nods, pushing the ring on and off his finger again. “Mmhmm. Zach’s were beautiful and poetic. Mine were more lighthearted, because, you know, apparently I’m emotionally stunted.” At least he can admit as much without bitterness now. Well, sort of without bitterness. “He promised to love and cherish. I promised not to make fun of his bedhead. That kind of thing.”

“God, you really are a mess.” He can feel her looking down at his hands, at the ring. “You didn’t have any sap in you at all?”

“I did,” he admits, licking his lips. “He, uh…one time he told the press, before we even got together, that he’d support me to the ends of the earth. And I was really affected by that, even then. It stuck with me. So I wrote that into my vows—that I’d support him to the ends of the earth too.”

Janine knocks her shoulder into his and looks up at him, her mouth curling into a smile. “Well, look around you, Chris. The end of the earth is here.”

She has a point. Still, he isn’t sure it’s that simple. “I just don’t know what it means, if he takes it back. Is it a fresh start? Is it picking up where we left off?”

“Can’t it be both?” Janine twists a little and looks back toward her cabin, at the shadows that dance across the curtains, Naomi moving around inside getting ready for bed. “We’re all starting fresh, whether we want to or not. You and Zach wouldn’t have been spared that, no matter what.”

She is right, of course, but that doesn’t keep Chris from carrying around the ring a few more days. He isn’t kidding himself that he’s waiting for the perfect moment. He knows he’s just too chicken-shit to take it out and face rejection. The self-flagellating part of him thinks he deserves a little more rejection, but it’s hard to risk ruining a good thing in hopes of making it better. 

Because it _is_ a good thing that they have going now. They have been sleeping squeezed into the same bed, with limbs tangled and hands clutching each other close. Zach sits next to him at meals, smiles at him, ruffles his hair, teases him for everything from talking to the plants to the way he stands under the camp shower until every last drop has emptied out of the bag. Chris gets him back by sneaking cold fingers up under his shirt when he’s least expecting it and telling everyone the most embarrassing stories he can think of about Zach From Before.

“One time he gave me the cold shoulder for half a day because I got on him for looking at his phone in an interview,” he tells everyone at the breakfast table.

“It was humiliating!” Zach protests, half playing along and half legitimately annoyed, from what Chris can tell. “You were acting like my mother!”

“Well, if you didn’t play with your phone at the worst times, I wouldn’t have to.”

“It’s kind of a moot point now, isn’t it?”

That is really the question: which points are moot and which are not? How much of what happened before matters now, and how much of it is just dead weight that needs shedding? Chris knows he could drive himself crazy—and nearly does—wondering what would have happened if a tiny little microbe hadn’t made the jump from pigs to squirrels to birds, or however-the-fuck it went. Would those divorce papers have been signed? Would he and Zach have made their way back to each other eventually, or would stubbornness have kept them apart until it was far too late? It doesn’t matter in a practical sense, but it still matters to Chris. He doesn’t want to think that all of this is a fluke. He can’t stop agonizing over how close he came to losing the best thing in his life.

Maybe that’s the problem. He doesn’t want a fresh start. So much of what made him who he is has disappeared. His parents, his sister, Joe, Patrick and Troian. His career, which he always insisted hadn’t been his dream, but which he tripped and fell into because it was the only thing that made him feel right and whole. He is starting over in so many ways, and he doesn’t want to have to start over with Zach too. He can’t imagine drawing a line in the sand to delineate the time before and the time after. If Zach is going to be his husband, he doesn’t want to have to tack “again” onto it.

It’s fear, then. If he’s being honest with himself, that is why the ring stays in his pocket when Zach comes to help him in the garden or when they undress to get in the shower together or when they walk hand-in-hand away from the fire after dinner. He is afraid the only way to give it back is to get down on one knee and admit that they have to do all of it over again.

\----

The lodge is empty and quiet, dark but for a flickering candle set on the table next to the basin in which Chris is scrubbing dishes. It’s easier to do this outside, where he can dump the water when it gets dirty, but in here, the water stays warm for longer, which is a worthwhile trade-off. He got tired a long time ago of going to bed with icicles for fingers and decided the extra trips down the back steps to empty and refill the bucket were well worth it.

The candles cast eerie shadows on the walls and the ceiling, but Chris doesn’t mind their company. Sometimes, when he is in here alone, he lets himself think back to the last spate of rolling blackouts that had him and Zach cuddling up in bed to read by candlelight, confident that the electricity would come on again eventually. He isn’t sure whether little moments of denial like that are helpful or harmful, but he knows he can’t shake them. No matter how he tries to tell himself that the lights aren’t going to flicker back to life any time soon, he always catches himself staring and hoping.

When a flood of light suddenly does cut through the darkness, Chris is startled enough that he jumps and sloshes dirty, soapy water down the front of his shirt. He curses and grabs for the dishrag as he looks toward the front windows, which have turned into squares of shimmering gold, like a spaceship is landing outside. Then, there is the sound of the truck engine roaring to life. Chris drops everything and makes for the door.

“What’s going on?” he says as he jogs down the front steps and sees Susan and Naomi standing there with their hands on their hips, like mirror images of each other, backlit by headlights. It isn’t full dark outside yet—the sky is shades of lavender and navy—but Chris still finds himself squinting against the light as he tries to make out who is in the front seat of the truck.

“Janine heard cows down by the road when she was walking the perimeter,” Susan said. “Zach and Henry are going to go see if they can find them and lead them back up here.”

It takes a few moments for the words to sink in. Chris watches as the truck reverses and starts down the road, and once it hits him, his mouth goes dry. 

“Wait, Zach is driving down to the main road?”

There must be something in his voice, because Naomi turns to look at him with concern. “He probably won’t even get out of the car, Chris. He’s just scouting ahead. Henry is coming behind on Hero with some lead ropes.”

It doesn’t matter. Nothing she says can calm him now. Frightening images are crowding into his mind—a wild-eyed man waving a gun, a neat little bullethole through Manny’s forehead, the color of the sky when Chris thought it would be the last time he saw it. He was under the impression that he had been coping with what happened to him, and with life in general, but now, as he watches the taillights retreat and hears the crunch of tires on the gravel, it feels like someone has put his chest in a vice. Air won’t enter his lungs. The darkness seems to be expanding, blocking out the light from the headlights. He stumbles forward one step, two steps, until he has drawn even with Susan, who looks over at him in alarm.

“Are you—?”

But he doesn’t let her finish her question, and he doesn’t let her hand on his arm stop him from taking off at a dead run.

The truck doesn’t have that much ground on him, and it can’t move fast over the decrepit, heavily rutted road. It doesn’t take long for him to draw almost even with the back bumper. Zach must catch sight of him in the rearview mirror, because the truck slows to a stop and the door swings open just in time for Chris to slip in the gravel and nearly careen into it, his feet sliding as he struggles against his own momentum. He clutches the door handle, then the car seat, then Zach’s hands when they reach for him. He’s breathing hard in a way that he can’t blame on the run or the altitude or even the sudden surge of panic that sent him running down the road like a madman.

“Chris, what—?”

Chris shakes his head frantically to cut him off. These next few seconds are going to be vital, and he has to calm down for them. He needs to slow his breathing and slow his heart so that this memory isn’t lost to the tide of fear that is clawing at the shore of his mind. 

Zach has been changed by this place, this new life. His skin is darker and his face thinner, but it’s more than that. There is a wariness in the set of his shoulders that never would have been there before. The confidence with which he has always carried himself has faded into something a lot more manufactured, like a thin veneer instead of an inherent trait. Chris has noticed all these things before, but what he hasn’t noticed until now is the way that none of that matters. What he feels when he looks at Zach now versus a year ago versus two years ago, five years ago—it’s the same. The feeling has deepened, widened, grown more and less intense with time, but it’s still the same on its most essential level. When everything else around him is like shifting sand, his love for Zach takes a familiar, comforting shape.

An overwrought sound works its way out of Chris’s throat, and he leans in to press his mouth to Zach’s. The taste of salt tells him someone is crying, and he has a feeling that someone is probably him. Zach must notice it too, because he jerks away like he’s been burned and takes Chris’s face in his hands, his eyes wide and worried. 

“What is it? What’s wrong?” 

The shakiness in Zach’s voice strikes Chris as funny, and he lets out a short, hysterical bark of laughter. Everything is wrong. Absolutely everything. But he has a feeling it isn’t going to matter much in a minute.

Right now what he wants to do is tell Zach to turn the truck around, to let someone else go down there in the dark to round up cows. It isn’t hard to predict what will happen if he does though. Zach will get annoyed, probably shove him away and roll on down the hill anyway, and Chris will be left worrying that their last interaction was a rocky one. He is so tired of things being rocky. He is so tired of grasping at Zach in all the wrong ways and pushing him away in the ways that count. It’s time to reach out in love instead of in fear.

Without even thinking about it, his fingers fish into his pocket and close around the ring. He plants his other hand on Zach’s thigh, then changes his mind and lifts it to his face.

Chris thinks about going down on one knee after all—fear of fresh starts be damned. That plan gets scrapped in an instant though. He doesn’t think he could keep it together long enough for a big proposal scene anyway, and sentimental words would just ruin the moment. Instead, he holds out his closed fist, face up. Zach cradles it in his palms like it’s a baby bird and stares down at it, his brow pinched in confusion. 

“What is it?” he asks.

Chris uncurls his fingers, revealing the unadorned circle of gold in the middle of his palm. His voice comes out thick and wet. “I thought you might want this back.”

There is a moment of silence, where the only sound Chris can hear is the juddering of the truck’s engine. Then, Zach dissolves. He is either laughing or crying or hyperventilating or all three, but it must be good, because he is closing his hands over Chris’s, trapping the ring between their palms, and slipping out of the seat so he can pepper Chris’s face in sloppy kisses.

“You’re an idiot, Chris,” he gasps. “You’re so stupid. I can’t believe you.”

Chris has no arguments—except that he thinks they have both been idiots. Life is hard, but it’s going to be hard either way. The least they can do is put some work into this one thing they can control. Chris always thought loving Zach wasn’t a choice he got to make, but he was wrong. It is a choice, and he has to choose it every day, even when it’s hard, _especially_ when it’s hard.

They kiss and kiss and keep kissing while Zach fumbles the ring back onto his finger. Chris gropes at his hand like a blind man until he can feel it there, back where it belongs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. It has been almost a year in the making and definitely was a huge labor of love, so I’m grateful that you took the time out of your life to allow me to share it with you. If you are interested, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://semper-ama.tumblr.com/).


End file.
